> Soniox
Soniox (soniox.com) sells speech-to-text, text-to-speech and speech translation through REST and WebSocket APIs, billed by tokens rather than per minute. Official pricing works out to about $0.10 per hour for async file transcription and $0.12 per hour for real-time streaming, expressed as $1.50 per 1M input audio tokens (async) or $2.00 per 1M (real-time), with input and output text at $3.50–$4.00 per 1M tokens; TTS is $4.00 per 1M input text tokens and $21.50 per 1M output audio tokens, about $0.70 per hour of generated speech. Translation across 60+ languages, speaker diarization, language identification and smart formatting are bundled in the same call at no extra cost.
// pros
- Published hourly reference prices: $0.10/hour for async and $0.12/hour for real-time speech-to-text, and about $0.70/hour for text-to-speech.
- Speech translation across 60+ languages is included in the same real-time call rather than billed as a separate service.
- Speaker diarization, language identification and smart formatting are bundled into the hourly rate instead of being sold as add-ons.
- Token accounting is documented for cost modelling: one hour of audio is about 30,000 input audio tokens, one hour of speech about 15,000 output text tokens, and one output character about 0.3 tokens.
- Developer surface is complete: REST plus WebSocket APIs, Python/Node/Web/React/React Native SDKs, temporary API keys for browser clients, and per-request usage logs plus a usage-summary endpoint for cost tracking.
// cons
- No free tier or credit grant is stated anywhere on the official pricing, documentation or home pages fetched.
- Pricing is purely consumption-based with no flat plan to cap spend in advance.
- Rates are quoted per token, so comparing against per-minute competitors requires the token arithmetic or the on-site calculator.
- Async and real-time rates differ, so the same workload costs more when it is streamed than when it is uploaded.
Pick Soniox when low-latency multilingual transcription with translation is the core requirement and the $0.10–$0.12 per hour reference points fit the unit economics of a call-centre or voice-agent workload. Budget from the first hour of testing since no free credit is published, and prefer the async path wherever latency allows to take the lower rate.
written by Mike Fleming, Uprouter editorial · verified against official sources September 16, 2026
No free tier
This provider does not offer a free tier as of our last verification (Sep 16, 2026). The cheapest way to try it is pay-as-you-go. If the provider adds a free tier, submit a correction and we’ll re-verify.
| Plan | Type | Monthly | Input /1M | Output /1M | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STT Async | payg | — | $1.50 | $3.50 | Audio tokens at $1.50/1M; Text input/output at $3.50/1M. |
| TTS | payg | — | $4.00 | $21.50 | Text tokens at $4.00/1M; Audio tokens at $21.50/1M. |
| STT async (file) — input audio tokens | payg | — | $1.50 | $3.50 | $1.50 per 1M input audio tokens (~$0.10/hr audio); input text $3.50/1M, output text $3.50/1M |
| STT real-time (streaming) — input audio tokens | payg | — | $2.00 | $4.00 | $2.00 per 1M input audio tokens (~$0.12/hr); input text $4.00/1M, output text $4.00/1M |
| TTS — input text tokens | payg | — | $4.00 | $21.50 | $4.00 per 1M input text tokens + $21.50 per 1M output audio tokens ≈ $0.70 per hour of generated speech |
Pricing normalized from public sources — always verify with the provider.
// model prices
| Model | Input /1M | Output /1M | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soniox STT (async/file) | — | — | — |
| Soniox STT (real-time streaming) | — | — | — |
| Soniox Text-to-Speech | — | — | — |
| Soniox 2 | — | — | — |
$ Does Soniox have a free tier?
No. Soniox does not offer a meaningful free tier — entry requires payment (pay-as-you-go or a plan). We mark this explicitly rather than showing a misleading zero.
$ How much does Soniox cost per 1M tokens?
Soniox does not publish simple per-1M-token pricing (it may bill per request, per output, or via a subscription plan). Check their official pricing page for exact figures.
$ Is Soniox safe to use?
Uprouter rates Soniox as low risk. Low policy risk, higher budget-planning risk: there is no published free tier, so every evaluation hour is billable, and because rates are token-denominated a mis-estimated token volume converts directly into cost. Real-time concurrency is capped by plan tier per the developer guides, which can throttle deployments sized on price alone. The provider is comparatively new and specialised, so concurrency limits, regional endpoints and error handling should be validated in a pilot before production voice traffic depends on it. Risk ratings are editorial, evidence-based, and never influenced by affiliate relationships.
Raw community sentiment, shown unblended. Votes never feed into objective data fields like price, risk, or status — and never into sort order.
No published reviews yet — be the first.
// more_informationprice history · live status · risk & confidence · code snippets
price_history
No recorded changes yet.
live_status
current: unknownNo probes recorded yet.
Uprouter runs its own probes; best-effort, not a guarantee. Probe results depend on our network location and cadence — for production, always use the provider’s own status page.
risk_&_confidence
Low policy risk, higher budget-planning risk: there is no published free tier, so every evaluation hour is billable, and because rates are token-denominated a mis-estimated token volume converts directly into cost. Real-time concurrency is capped by plan tier per the developer guides, which can throttle deployments sized on price alone. The provider is comparatively new and specialised, so concurrency limits, regional endpoints and error handling should be validated in a pilot before production voice traffic depends on it.
Confidence reflects how much verifiable evidence (official docs, probe history, community reports) backs this entry. Risk is our editorial assessment of operator reliability and terms — not financial advice.
code_snippets
# Soniox's own API — get a key from their dashboard
curl https://soniox.com/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer THEIR_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "soniox/stt-async",
"messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Hello" }]
}'Direct to the provider — Uprouter receives nothing; verify their current pricing before purchasing.
Ranked by neutral similarity signals only — live status, free-tier shape and free-credit proximity. Commercial relationships never influence this list.