AI Transcription 85% Cheaper Than OpenAI: Multimodal Pricing for Bot Developers
Hanzo Bot delivers speech-to-text at $0.0009/minute — 85% cheaper than OpenAI Whisper — plus image generation at the industry's lowest price of $0.00013/step.
Audio-enabled bots have always been expensive to run. Voice assistants, transcription services, podcast summarizers, meeting note-takers — every minute of audio costs money. At OpenAI's Whisper pricing, a lot of money.
Today we're announcing multimodal pricing on Hanzo Bot that changes the economics of building bots that can hear, see, and create.
The Numbers
| Capability | Hanzo Bot | OpenAI | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speech-to-text (batch) | $0.0009/min | $0.006/min | 85% |
| Speech-to-text (quality) | $0.0015/min | $0.006/min | 75% |
| Streaming ASR (real-time) | $0.0035/min | N/A | Real-time capable |
| Image generation (standard) | $0.04/image | $0.04–0.08 | Matched or cheaper |
| Image generation (fast) | $0.00035/step | N/A | For iteration |
| Image generation (fastest) | $0.00013/step | N/A | Industry lowest |
These prices apply to Hanzo's proprietary Zen3 model family, accessible through the same API that serves 100+ models from every major provider.
What 85% Cheaper Means in Practice
At OpenAI's Whisper pricing of $0.006 per minute:
- 1,000 hours/month = $360/month
- 10,000 hours/month = $3,600/month
- 100,000 hours/month = $36,000/month
At Hanzo's Zen3 Audio Fast pricing of $0.0009 per minute:
- 1,000 hours/month = $54/month
- 10,000 hours/month = $540/month
- 100,000 hours/month = $5,400/month
For a startup processing 10,000 hours of audio monthly, that's $3,060 saved every month — $36,720 per year.
Four Audio Models
Zen3 Audio ($0.0015/min) — Best quality. Multi-language support, highest accuracy. Use when accuracy matters more than cost.
Zen3 Audio Fast ($0.0009/min) — Best value. Multi-language support, fast inference. The default choice for most workloads.
Zen3 ASR ($0.0035/min) — Real-time streaming. Sub-second latency for live transcription, voice assistants, and real-time captioning.
Zen3 ASR v1 ($0.0032/min) — Legacy streaming. For existing integrations.
Image Generation: From $0.04 to $0.00013
The Zen3 Image family covers every use case:
| Model | Pricing | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Zen3 Image | $0.04/image | General-purpose generation |
| Zen3 Image Max | $0.08/image | Professional creative work |
| Zen3 Image Dev | $0.0005/step | Experimentation and iteration |
| Zen3 Image Fast | $0.00035/step | Real-time generation |
| Zen3 Image SDXL | $0.00013/step | High-resolution, high-throughput |
| Zen3 Image SSD | $0.00013/step | Fastest, cheapest |
| Zen3 Image Playground | $0.00013/step | Aesthetic/artistic styles |
At $0.00013 per step, you can generate thousands of images per dollar. For bots that create social media content, product mockups, or design variations — this changes the unit economics entirely.
Content Safety Included
Every Hanzo Bot deployment includes access to Zen3 Guard — a 4B-parameter content safety classifier covering 9 safety categories across 119 languages. No separate moderation API needed.
All Through One API Key
Every model above — audio, image, text, safety — is accessible through the same Hanzo API key that also serves GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, and 100+ other models. One integration. One bill.
Start building at hanzo.bot with $5 free credit.
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