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Giggy vs OpenAI speech APIs
Giggy text to speech costs $5 per million characters on Fast against $15 for OpenAI tts-1. Recorded transcription costs $0.04 per hour against $0.36 for Whisper and gpt-4o-transcribe.
Text to speech: what you pay
| Provider | Mode or model | USD per 1M characters |
|---|---|---|
| Giggy | Fast | $5.00 |
| Giggy | Streaming | $10.00 |
| Fish Audio | S2.1 Pro | $15.00 |
| Inworld | Realtime TTS-2 Flash | $15.00 |
| OpenAI | tts-1 | $15.00 |
| Azure | Neural TTS | $15.00 |
| Inworld | Realtime TTS-2 | $25.00 |
| Amazon | Polly Generative | $30.00 |
| Deepgram | Aura-2 | $30.00 |
| Chirp 3: HD | $30.00 | |
| OpenAI | tts-1-hd | $30.00 |
| Cartesia | Sonic-3.6 · Scale overage | $38.00 |
| ElevenLabs | Flash v2.5 | $40.00 |
| ElevenLabs | Multilingual v2 / v3 / v4 | $80.00 |
| MiniMax | Speech-02-HD | $100.00 |
ElevenLabs, OpenAI, Deepgram, Google, Amazon and Azure checked November 11, 2026; Fish and Inworld October 20; Cartesia and MiniMax October 13.
Speech to text: what you pay
| Provider | Mode or model | USD per audio hour |
|---|---|---|
| Giggy | Fast | $0.040 |
| AssemblyAI | Universal-2 | $0.150 |
| OpenAI | gpt-4o-mini-transcribe | $0.180 |
| Google Cloud | Speech-to-Text V2 · Dynamic batch | $0.180 |
| Azure | Speech · Batch transcription | $0.180 |
| ElevenLabs | Scribe v3 | $0.200 |
| AssemblyAI | Universal-3.5 Pro | $0.210 |
| Deepgram | Nova-3 · Pre-recorded | $0.258 |
| Deepgram | Nova-3 Multilingual · Pre-recorded | $0.312 |
| OpenAI | Whisper / gpt-4o-transcribe | $0.360 |
| Amazon | Transcribe · Standard batch | $0.360 |
| Provider | Mode or model | USD per audio hour |
|---|---|---|
| Giggy | Streaming | $0.080 |
| Soniox | stt-rt-v5 · Streaming (est.) | $0.120 |
| ElevenLabs | Scribe v2 Realtime | $0.220 |
| Speechmatics | Linden-1 · Agent STT | $0.300 |
| OpenAI | GPT-4o Transcribe (est.) | $0.360 |
| Speechmatics | Real-time Enhanced | $0.430 |
| AssemblyAI | Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime | $0.450 |
| Deepgram | Nova-3 · English streaming | $0.462 |
| Deepgram | Flux Multilingual · Streaming | $0.468 |
| Google Cloud | Gemini 3.5 Transcribe Live (est.) | $0.536 |
| Amazon | Transcribe · Standard Streaming | $0.600 |
| Google Cloud | Chirp 3 · Streaming | $0.960 |
| Azure | Speech · Standard realtime | $1.00 |
| OpenAI | GPT-Live-Transcribe | $1.02 |
All recorded-audio prices checked November 11, 2026 on each provider's pricing page or official price API. ElevenLabs, OpenAI, Deepgram, Google, Amazon, Azure and AssemblyAI checked November 11, 2026; Speechmatics October 8; Soniox token-based estimate October 20.
Speech to text
OpenAI lists Whisper and gpt-4o-transcribe at $0.006 per minute ($0.36 per hour), gpt-4o-mini-transcribe at $0.18 per hour and GPT-Live-Transcribe at $1.02 per hour. Giggy Fast costs $0.04 per hour for recordings and Giggy Streaming $0.08 per hour for live audio.
On the Pipecat English benchmark, Giggy recorded a 1.85% semantic word error rate against 2.95% for GPT-4o Transcribe.
Text to speech
OpenAI lists tts-1 at $15 and tts-1-hd at $30 per million characters. Giggy Fast costs $5 and Streaming $10. Giggy offers 25,000+ voices in 240+ languages, plus Voice Design and Voice Clone for custom voices.
Where OpenAI may suit you better
OpenAI is a good fit when speech is one part of a wider OpenAI stack, such as its realtime voice models. Giggy also offers an OpenAI-compatible speech endpoint, so you can switch the speech part of an existing integration with a base URL and key change.
Frequently asked questions
Is Giggy cheaper than OpenAI for speech?
Yes. Giggy Fast text to speech costs $5 per million characters against main5 for OpenAI tts-1, and Giggy Fast transcription costs $0.04 per audio hour against $0.36 for Whisper and gpt-4o-transcribe.
Does Giggy have an OpenAI-compatible API?
Yes. Giggy offers an OpenAI-compatible speech endpoint, so an existing OpenAI text-to-speech integration can switch with a base URL, key and voice change.
Which is more accurate for transcription?
On the Pipecat English benchmark, Giggy recorded a 1.85% semantic word error rate against 2.95% for GPT-4o Transcribe. Results vary by language; see the FLEURS comparison on the speech-to-text page.