What’s the cheapest STT API in 2026? Real comparison (and why Orchard is winning)

Hey r/orchardrun,

I’ve been testing almost every major Speech-to-Text API this year and wanted to share a transparent breakdown, especially for people working with long audios and high volume.

Current pricing reality (June 2026):

• Orchard → $0.00042 per minute
• Deepgram → ~$0.0043/min
• OpenAI Whisper → ~$0.006/min
• AssemblyAI → $0.15 – $0.21 per hour
• Google / Azure → $0.006 – $0.012/min

Orchard is currently the cheapest option for most real-world use cases.

Why we’re winning right now:

• Extremely strong pricing on large files
• No nasty surprises with concurrency or heavy workloads
• Built specifically for developers who need to process lots of audio affordably
• Quality stays very competitive

We created Orchard because we were tired of spending hundreds (sometimes thousands) per month just to transcribe our own data at scale.

Quick question for the community:

• What’s your current monthly audio volume?
• Which STT provider are you using right now?
• Are you happy with what you’re paying?

Drop your answers belowI’ll reply personally and can even give you a quick cost comparison with Orchard.

Want to try it? → orchardrun.com (free credits for new users)

Let’s make high-quality STT actually affordable in 2026