Speechmatics $100 Free Credit

Overview

Speechmatics provides new accounts with $100 in usage credit and no credit card required. Under Speechmatics' credit model, 1 credit equals $1, so the balance maps directly to the published per-hour and per-character rates. The credit applies to both Speech-to-Text (batch and real-time) and Text-to-Speech.

Free Plan Limits

• $100 one-time credit, no card required at signup; the sign-up credit lasts 12 months.
• 2 concurrent real-time sessions.
• 1 batch job per second and 3 concurrent Voice Agent conversations.
• 55+ transcription languages, with the same models as paid tiers.
• Service access pauses once the credit balance reaches zero; adding a card switches the account to pay-as-you-go.

What $100 Covers

At current pre-recorded rates, $100 is roughly 830 hours of Melia 1 multilingual transcription ($0.12/hr), 430 hours of Standard ($0.23/hr) or 260 hours of Enhanced ($0.38/hr), or about 9 million characters of text-to-speech ($0.011 per 1,000 characters). Real-time rates are higher. All three transcription models (Standard, Enhanced, and Melia 1) are available.

Key Features

Speaker diarization (speaker, channel, and channel+speaker modes), language identification, custom dictionaries, precise timestamps, and optional translation, summarization, sentiment, topics, and chapters bolt-ons. Deployment is multi-region across the US, EU, and Australia, and official integrations exist for voice-agent stacks such as Pipecat.

How to Get Started

1. Sign up at the Speechmatics portal.
2. Verify your email and generate an API key under Settings.
3. Call the batch REST API at POST https://asr.api.speechmatics.com/v2/jobs or connect to a real-time WebSocket endpoint.

The free plan is intended for developers and early exploration; usage beyond the credit is billed at the standard rates above once a card is added.