Pick Deepgram if
voice-app and contact-center engineers who will read a $/minute row and ship an API key.
Read the Deepgram pageDeepgram vs OpenAI Whisper
Our take
Pick Deepgram if voice-app and contact-center engineers who will read a $/minute row and ship an API key. Pick OpenAI Whisper if developers and researchers who will run a checkpoint locally or on a Space and accept open-model quality. Skip Deepgram if people who want a local transcribe CLI (OpenAI Whisper) with no vendor bill. Skip OpenAI Whisper if people who want a hosted voice product with a published credit card
Deepgram
**speech API
OpenAI Whisper
speech-to-text model you can run locally
Best for
Deepgram Streaming or pre-recorded STT billed per minute
OpenAI Whisper Transcribe or translate speech
Free plan
Deepgram No free plan
OpenAI Whisper $0 · mIT. You pay CPU/GPU and disk for the checkpoint
Lowest paid
Deepgram Growth $4/yr
OpenAI Whisper Not published by the vendor
Coding agent
Deepgram Nova-3 STT
OpenAI Whisper
Runs where
Deepgram
OpenAI Whisper Local or hosted
Watch out
Deepgram Streaming is metered while the socket is open
OpenAI Whisper Local is not free electricity
Last checked
Deepgram 2026-10-20 · deepgram.com/pricing
OpenAI Whisper 2026-10-20 · github.com/openai/whisper
Which one, then?
Pick OpenAI Whisper if
developers and researchers who will run a checkpoint locally or on a Space and accept open-model quality.
Read the OpenAI Whisper page