A rented GPU server that costs about 383.98 US dollars a month would have to transcribe about 2,560 hours of audio a month to cost the same as AssemblyAI's Universal-2 rate of 0.15 dollars per hour.

Checked against its source on October 17, 2026

What it measures: This compares a fully used server with a per-hour cloud rate at list prices. It ignores the cost of the staff who run the server, the storage it needs and any cleanup pass, all of which add cost to self-hosting.
How it is calculated: 383.98 dollars per month / 0.15 dollars per hour of audio = 2,559.9, rounded to 2,560 hours

Calculated from