AssemblyAI vs Baseten: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of AssemblyAI and Baseten — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Rates sourced from public APIs — verify before use.
AssemblyAI
Universal-2 speech-to-text with speaker diarisation and audio intelligence
AssemblyAI provides a speech-to-text and audio intelligence API. Its Universal-2 model offers high-accuracy transcription with built-in speaker diarisation, sentiment analysis, topic detection, and PII redaction. The Nano model targets cost-sensitive batch workloads. Pricing is per audio hour.
Baseten
Inference infrastructure for production ML — GLM, DeepSeek V4, Kimi K3, Nemotron, Muse
Baseten is a production ML inference platform offering dedicated and serverless GPU deployments for open-weight models. The catalog includes GLM-5.3, GLM-5.2, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813, Kimi K3, Nemotron 3.5 Super VL, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra, GPT OSS 120B, and Muse Spark Open. Baseten is designed for teams that need reliable, low-latency inference with custom deployment options. Pricing is published at baseten.co/pricing.
Key metric comparison
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
Live token pricing
Strengths and weaknesses
AssemblyAI
Baseten
Key differentiators
Universal-2 bundles transcription with speaker diarisation, sentiment, topic detection, and PII redaction — plus LeMUR for LLM-powered audio Q&A — in a single API call.
Production ML inference infrastructure with dedicated GPU deployments — GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1, Kimi K3, and Nemotron with Fast variants for throughput-optimised workloads.
Frequently asked questions
AssemblyAI FAQs
How is AssemblyAI priced?
AssemblyAI charges per audio hour. Universal-2 is $0.37/hour and Nano is $0.10/hour. Additional audio intelligence features (diarisation, sentiment, PII redaction) are priced separately. See assemblyai.com/pricing for current rates.
What is Universal-2?
Universal-2 is AssemblyAI's flagship transcription model with built-in speaker diarisation, sentiment analysis, topic detection, and PII redaction. It is designed for meeting intelligence and call analytics use cases.
What is LeMUR?
LeMUR (Leveraging Large Language Models to Understand Recorded Audio) is an AssemblyAI feature that lets you run LLM-powered Q&A, summarisation, and action-item extraction directly over transcribed audio without building a separate pipeline.
Baseten FAQs
What is Baseten?
Baseten is a production ML inference platform offering dedicated and serverless GPU deployments for open-weight models including GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3, Nemotron, and Muse Spark Open. See baseten.co/pricing for current rates.
What models does Baseten offer?
Baseten's catalog includes GLM-5.3, GLM-5.3 Fast, GLM-5.3-Flash, GLM-5.2, GLM-5.2 Fast, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Fast, DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813, Kimi K3, Nemotron 3.5 Super VL, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra, GPT OSS 120B, and Muse Spark Open. See baseten.co/pricing for current rates.
How much does Baseten cost?
As of October 2026: GLM-5.3 $1.40/$4.40, GLM-5.3 Fast $2.10/$6.60, GLM-5.3-Flash $0.15/$0.50, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash $0.30/$1.20, DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 $1.32/$3.96, Kimi K3 $3.00/$15.00, Nemotron 3.5 Super VL $0.20/$0.50, GPT OSS 120B $0.10/$0.50. See baseten.co/pricing for current rates.
Provider resources
AssemblyAI — Universal-2 speech-to-text with speaker diarisation and audio intelligence
AssemblyAI provides a speech-to-text and audio intelligence API. Its Universal-2 model offers high-accuracy transcription with built-in speaker diarisation, sentiment analysis, topic detection, and PII redaction. The Nano model targets cost-sensitive batch workloads. Pricing is per audio hour.
Universal-2 bundles transcription with speaker diarisation, sentiment, topic detection, and PII redaction — plus LeMUR for LLM-powered audio Q&A — in a single API call.
Baseten — Inference infrastructure for production ML — GLM, DeepSeek V4, Kimi K3, Nemotron, Muse
Baseten is a production ML inference platform offering dedicated and serverless GPU deployments for open-weight models. The catalog includes GLM-5.3, GLM-5.2, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813, Kimi K3, Nemotron 3.5 Super VL, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra, GPT OSS 120B, and Muse Spark Open. Baseten is designed for teams that need reliable, low-latency inference with custom deployment options. Pricing is published at baseten.co/pricing.
Production ML inference infrastructure with dedicated GPU deployments — GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1, Kimi K3, and Nemotron with Fast variants for throughput-optimised workloads.
Key strengths compared
AssemblyAI
- Universal-2 includes speaker diarisation, sentiment, topics, and PII redaction out of the box
- Audio intelligence features reduce need for post-processing pipelines
- Nano tier at $0.10/hour for cost-sensitive batch transcription
- Speech and audio only — no general-purpose LLM or image models
- Per-hour pricing model differs from token-based LLM APIs
Baseten
- Dedicated GPU deployments for production reliability and consistent latency
- GLM-5.3, GLM-5.2, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash/Pro, Kimi K3, Nemotron, Muse Spark Open
- Fast and Fast variants for throughput-optimised inference
- Smaller catalog than Together AI or Fireworks
- Less documentation for new users than major providers
Key weaknesses compared
AssemblyAI
- Speech and audio only — no general-purpose LLM or image models
- Per-hour pricing model differs from token-based LLM APIs
- Advanced audio intelligence features add cost on top of base transcription
Baseten
- Smaller catalog than Together AI or Fireworks
- Less documentation for new users than major providers
- Dedicated deployments require more setup than pure serverless
Provider category context
AssemblyAI is a frontier lab, founded in 2017. Baseten is a inference api, founded in 2019. AssemblyAI as a frontier lab trains and serves its own proprietary models. Baseten as an inference API provider hosts open-weight models — typically offering lower prices for equivalent capability tiers but without access to proprietary frontier models.
How to choose between them
Choose AssemblyAI if you need Meeting intelligence. Choose Baseten if you need dedicated gpu deployments for production reliability and consistent latency. For high-volume production workloads, run a cost comparison using the token pricing table above with your actual prompt/completion token ratio — the cheapest provider depends heavily on your input-to-output token ratio.