Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API pricing: plans, free tier and what to watch for

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API pricing at a glance: Standard (v2 / Chirp) $0.016 / minute, Dynamic Batch ~$0.004 / minute (≈75% off Standard), Volume / committed-use tiers as low as $0.004 / minute, Legacy v1 API $0.024 / minute

The short answer

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text is billed per 15 seconds. It has a free tier: 60 min/mo + $300 credit. The paid plans we list start at ~$0.004 / minute (≈75% off Standard) (Dynamic Batch).

Plans and prices

Plan	Price	What it covers
Standard (v2 / Chirp)	$0.016 / minute	Real-time and batch transcription on the v2 API; Chirp models included at no surcharge. Down from $0.024/min on v1.
Dynamic Batch	~$0.004 / minute (≈75% off Standard)	Discounted async tier for non-urgent jobs with results delivered within up to 24 hours.
Volume / committed-use tiers	as low as $0.004 / minute	Per-minute rate drops at high monthly transcription volumes.
Legacy v1 API	$0.024 / minute	Older API generation; standard and enhanced/phone-call models.
Free tier	$0 for first 60 min/month	60 minutes of audio free each month; new Google Cloud customers also get $300 in credits.

How Google Cloud Speech-to-Text bills you

The pricing model is per 15 seconds. Hyperscaler STT (Chirp models) with 125+ languages, contractual enterprise SLAs and GCP-wide infrastructure, but heavier console onboarding. Best suited to: enterprise multilingual stt on gcp.

What to watch for on the bill

Confusing v1-vs-v2 split with different features, prices and regional availability
Add-ons such as speaker diarization cost extra and are not transparently documented on the public pricing page
Effective bill often exceeds the headline $0.016/min once GCP overhead and add-ons are counted
Requires a full Google Cloud account, billing and ADC auth setup rather than a single API key

The pricing page we read

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text pricing page, captured for reference — Capture of cloud.google.com. Captured from Germany, so some vendors show local prices or currency. Listed prices are verified Jun 27, 2026. The live page may differ.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/pricing. Prices change, so confirm there before you commit.

Compare Google Cloud Speech-to-Text with alternatives

Other speech-to-text apis: Deepgram, AssemblyAI, OpenAI Whisper / GPT-4o Transcribe, Amazon Transcribe, Speechmatics.

Looking at quality rather than price? See the Google Cloud Speech-to-Text score on APIbenchmarks. Full entry: Google Cloud Speech-to-Text pricing.