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Microsoft Launches MAI-Transcribe-2, Cutting Speech-Transcription Pricing 72% While Topping Speed Benchmarks

Microsoft AI's new speech-recognition model prices audio transcription at $0.10 per hour, undercutting OpenAI, Google, and ElevenLabs on price and speed.

AI & Machine Learning Models
AI Models Microsoft speech recognition MAI-Transcribe-2 Mustafa Suleyman
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Overview

Microsoft AI on September 3, 2026, released MAI-Transcribe-2, a speech-recognition model the company says is faster, more accurate, and cheaper than the offerings of OpenAI, Google, and ElevenLabs, according to Microsoft AI and VentureBeat. The model launched at $0.10 per hour of audio, a price Microsoft has framed as a limited-time offer running through the end of 2026, according to Microsoft AI.

What We Know

  • The launch price of $0.10 per hour represents roughly a 72% cut from the $0.36 per hour Microsoft charged when it shipped the first model in the line five months earlier, according to VentureBeat. For an enterprise processing 100,000 hours of call-center audio a year, the annual bill drops from $36,000 to $10,000 at the new rate, VentureBeat reported.
  • MAI-Transcribe-2 transcribes audio in 60 languages, up from 43 languages in June’s MAI-Transcribe-1.5 and 25 languages in April’s original MAI-Transcribe-1, according to VentureBeat.
  • Microsoft says the model ranks first on the FLEURS multilingual benchmark across those 60 languages with an average word-error rate of 5.2%, according to Microsoft AI and VentureBeat. That average is numerically higher than the 3.7% word-error rate MAI-Transcribe-1.5 reported on FLEURS in June, which VentureBeat attributed to the newer model’s broader language coverage — averaging across 60 languages instead of 43 folds in more low-resource languages where every model struggles — rather than a regression in quality.
  • On the Artificial Analysis word-error-rate leaderboard, an independent benchmark, MAI-Transcribe-2 ranks second, according to Microsoft AI. That is up from third place for MAI-Transcribe-1.5 in June, according to VentureBeat. Artificial Analysis’s own leaderboard independently lists MAI-Transcribe-2 at a 2.0% word-error rate, placing it behind only Alibaba’s Fun-Realtime-ASR-preview model at 1.7% and ahead of ElevenLabs’ Scribe v2 (2.2%), Google’s Gemini 3.5 Transcribe (2.6%), and OpenAI’s GPT Transcribe (3.3%).
  • Based on evaluations Artificial Analysis ran, MAI-Transcribe-2 is 10 times faster than OpenAI’s GPT-Transcribe, seven times faster than ElevenLabs’ Scribe v2, and five times faster than Google’s Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, according to Microsoft AI and VentureBeat.
  • New features include speaker diarization, word-level timestamps, keyword biasing for domain-specific terminology, automatic language identification, and configurable “verbatim” and “clean” transcription output modes, according to Microsoft AI. The model also supports code-switching for conversations that move between languages mid-sentence, including “commonly blended language pairs such as Hinglish and Spanglish,” per Microsoft AI.
  • Microsoft’s release names four rivals — OpenAI’s GPT-Transcribe, Google’s Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, OpenAI’s older Whisper V3-Large, and ElevenLabs’ Scribe v2 — but does not mention transcription specialists such as Deepgram, AssemblyAI, Speechmatics, or Rev, and does not claim to beat Alibaba’s models on accuracy, according to VentureBeat.
  • MAI-Transcribe-2 is available through Microsoft Foundry, MAI Playground, and Open Router, according to Microsoft AI.
  • The release continues a rapid cadence for Microsoft’s transcription line: MAI-Transcribe-1 launched April 2 with 25 languages at $0.36 per hour, and MAI-Transcribe-1.5 followed June 2 with 43 languages, keyword biasing, and a third-place Artificial Analysis ranking, according to VentureBeat. As previously reported, MAI-Transcribe-1.5 was among seven new MAI models Microsoft announced at its Build conference in June, according to VentureBeat, part of a broader push to build frontier-class models without relying on rivals.
  • Microsoft AI’s chief executive, Mustafa Suleyman, has framed the effort in terms of independence from OpenAI. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI and hosts OpenAI’s models across Azure, Office, and Copilot, according to VentureBeat. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told CNBC in January 2025, “Microsoft is building their own AI and I don’t think Microsoft will use OpenAI in the future. They’ll have their own frontier models,” adding, “That’s why they hired Mustafa Suleyman,” according to VentureBeat’s account of the earlier remarks.
  • In October 2025, Microsoft and OpenAI restructured their partnership in a deal that allowed Microsoft to “independently pursue AGI alone or in partnership with third parties” for the first time, and in April 2026 the companies amended the deal again, ending Microsoft’s exclusive access to OpenAI’s models and eliminating Microsoft’s revenue-share payments, according to VentureBeat.

What We Don’t Know

  • Microsoft has not disclosed a standard rate or an end date for the $0.10-per-hour launch price beyond calling it valid through the end of 2026, according to Microsoft AI.
  • The release does not address real-time streaming transcription performance, focusing its benchmark claims on batch throughput and long-form audio, according to VentureBeat.
  • Microsoft has not published a per-language breakdown of the 5.2% average FLEURS word-error rate, leaving open how accuracy varies between major and low-resource languages, per VentureBeat.
  • The release does not include a diarization error rate or comparable metric for how accurately the model attributes speech to individual speakers, per VentureBeat.
  • Microsoft’s announcement does not address data residency, retention, or whether audio submitted through Foundry is used for future model training, per VentureBeat.

Analysis

The pricing and benchmark claims arrive as part of a broader pattern in Microsoft’s AI strategy: building specialized, in-house models modality by modality — images, voice, transcription, code, and reasoning — and pricing them below frontier-lab competitors while distributing them through Microsoft Foundry, according to VentureBeat. Three transcription releases in five months — April’s MAI-Transcribe-1, June’s MAI-Transcribe-1.5, and now MAI-Transcribe-2 — have each expanded language coverage while adding features, a cadence that comes as Microsoft’s partnership terms with OpenAI have loosened twice within the past year.