OpenAI gpt-transcribe $0.0045 per minute vs Sume's STT rate

OpenAI's pricing page lists gpt-transcribe at $0.0045 per minute, gpt-live-transcribe at $0.017 per minute and Whisper at $0.006 per minute. Sume's speech-to-text is $0.01 per audio minute, billed per audio minute, with a maximum of 10 minutes per request. For 1,000 minutes that is $4.50, $17.00, $6.00 and $10.00.

OpenAI facts are from its pricing and deprecations pages, read 2026-10-01. The Sume rate is from the rate card and the /v1/stt-1.0/transcribe request schema in the API reference. Accuracy and language coverage are not compared.

What does each option cost per 1,000 minutes?

Straight multiplication of the per-minute rates, before Sume's 5.5% agent fee that applies by default.

Which OpenAI transcription models are being retired?

OpenAI's deprecations page lists whisper-1, gpt-4o-transcribe, gpt-4o-mini-transcribe and gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize for shutdown on February 26, 2027, with gpt-transcribe and gpt-live-transcribe as the replacements. Anyone still on a Whisper-era id has to move, so the rate to budget for is the new one. Sume's id, sume/stt-1.0, is a stable name; the provider model behind it stays internal.

How does Sume reserve a transcription?

Send audio_url and, ideally, duration_seconds (maximum 600). If you omit it, Sume reserves 1 minute. A longer file must be split into pieces of at most 10 minutes; see transcribe long audio files.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/stt-1.0/transcribe \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: stt-rate-001" \
  -d '{
    "audio_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/call.wav",
    "duration_seconds": 300,
    "language_code": "en"
  }'