GPT-4o Mini Transcribe vs Nova-3
OpenAI's GPT-4o Mini Transcribe and Deepgram's Nova-3 both target speech generation, but they price and behave differently. Here is the side-by-side.
Pricing checked against provider documentation on . How we verify
The short answer
GPT-4o Mini Transcribe is the cheaper option — roughly 1.4x less on a blended workload, and it suits low-cost transcription inside the openai stack. Nova-3 justifies its premium when you need real-time streaming transcription.
OpenAI • GPT-4o Transcribe
$0.00 / $
/ audio min (input / output)
Half the price of the full transcription model and the cheapest managed option OpenAI offers. Accuracy holds up well on clean audio; test it specifically on noisy recordings, strong accents, and technical vocabulary before committing, since that is where the gap to the larger model shows.
Deepgram • Nova
$0.00 / $
/ audio min (input / output)
Built for streaming rather than batch, with the low latency and concurrency handling that live captioning and voice agents need. Deepgram also sells a managed Voice Agent API on top, which bundles the LLM and TTS legs and prices per conversation minute rather than per transcription minute.
Input price
Nova-3 is 43% more expensive than GPT-4o Mini Transcribe on input tokens.
Specification comparison
| Attribute | GPT-4o Mini Transcribe | Nova-3 |
|---|---|---|
| Input (/ audio min) | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Output (/ audio min) | — | — |
| Cached input | — | — |
| Context window | — | — |
| Max output | — | — |
| Native reasoning | No | No |
| Knowledge cutoff | — | — |
| Relative latency | low | low |
| Open weights | No | No |
| API model ID | gpt-4o-mini-transcribe | nova-3 |
| Status | stable | stable |
GPT-4o Mini Transcribe: The OpenAI transcription endpoint caps uploads at 25 MB, which a single long recording will exceed.
Nova-3: Batch pay-as-you-go rate for the monolingual model. Streaming is higher and quoted between $0.0048 and $0.0077/min depending on plan and source; multilingual adds roughly 20%. Confirm your tier in the console.
Choose GPT-4o Mini Transcribe if…
- Clean batch audio at volume
- Voice note transcription
- Draft transcripts for human review
- Prototyping before choosing a provider
Choose Nova-3 if…
- Live captioning
- Voice agents and IVR
- Real-time meeting transcription
- Call-centre analytics
Frequently asked
Is GPT-4o Mini Transcribe or Nova-3 cheaper?
GPT-4o Mini Transcribe is cheaper. On a blended 3:1 input-to-output workload it costs about 1.4x less than Nova-3.
Which has the larger context window, GPT-4o Mini Transcribe or Nova-3?
Both accept up to — tokens, so context is not a differentiator here.
Should I use GPT-4o Mini Transcribe or Nova-3?
Pick GPT-4o Mini Transcribe for low-cost transcription inside the openai stack. Pick Nova-3 for real-time streaming transcription. If cost dominates the decision, GPT-4o Mini Transcribe wins; if you need the capability ceiling, benchmark both on your own evals before committing.