Salad vs Assembly AI
Salad Transcription API is 1.7% more accurate than Assembly AI at 56% less cost for batch transcription, with translation, summaries, sentiment, and captions included in one price. Same public benchmark, same methodology.
Better accuracy than Assembly AI.
Salad Transcription API scored 95.1% accuracy for English against 93.4% for Assembly AI, measured on the CommonVoice 5.1 dataset replicating Assembly AI's published benchmark. Read the benchmark.
Lower cost than Assembly AI.
Save 56% on transcription by switching from Assembly AI. Salad's price is the pay-as-you-go volume tier of $0.16 per audio hour; Assembly AI's is its published batch rate at the time of the benchmark.
One price. More features.
Features Assembly AI sells separately, or doesn't offer, are included with every Salad transcription.
| Feature | Salad | Assembly AI |
|---|---|---|
| Translation | ✓ | ✗ |
| Audio transcription | ✓ | ✓ |
| Video transcription | ✓ | ✗ |
| Multilingual transcription | ✓ | ✓ |
| Summarization | ✓ | ✗ |
| Speaker identification | ✓ | ✓ |
| SRT output | ✓ | ✗ |
| Transcribe multiple files | ✓ | ✓ |
| Text sentiment analysis | ✓ | Additional API |
| Text classification | ✓ | Additional API |
| Custom LLM prompt | ✓ | Additional API |
| Custom vocabulary | ✓ | Additional API |
| Max length | 2.5 hrs | 10 hrs |
"A freaking nuclear reactor for adding transcription to your own services. If you need to transcribe-enable your workflows, then Salad is the best I've found."
Dr. Joseph Sweeney · Analyst & Advisor, IRBS"A game-changer for SaaS entrepreneurs and a launchpad for innovation & business growth. Despite its low cost, the transcriptions are remarkably fast and accurate."
Danny McCoy · EntrepreneurSwitching from Assembly AI.
How do I switch from Assembly AI?
Follow the migration guide. Most teams finish in a day. The one-time integration cost is typically repaid within weeks at the price difference above.
How does Salad have the lowest price?
Other APIs rent expensive data-center GPUs. Salad's transcription runs on the Community Cloud's consumer GPUs, the lowest-cost compute in the market, and tiered pricing passes volume savings through.
How does Salad keep accuracy high?
Audio enhancement in pre-processing, Whisper Large v3 class recognition, LLM post-processing, and a knowledge base for custom vocabulary and context. Diarization and accent handling are built in.
How is my data handled?
Files are processed in isolated environments on SOC 2 Type I compliant infrastructure with end-to-end encryption, data sanitization, and access controls. Enterprise customers can also self-host.