AI Cost Per Task

Office

Cost to transcribe one hour of audio

Sixty minutes of recorded audio, priced at the published per-minute rate.

Sorted by the calculated USD amount, lowest first. A sponsored label would not move a row or change a figure. How the figures are made.

400 hours of audio a month: AI about A$154.84. By hand about 1,600 hours, about A$47,120.00.400 hours of audio a month: AI about US$108.00. By hand about 1,600 hours, about US$32,866.20.

Starting wage is the cited award minimum, not a loaded cost. Fair Work Ombudsman, Clerks—Private Sector Award 2020. A USD figure here is that AUD wage converted with the same RBA rate as the AI prices.

  1. 1

    GPT-Transcribe

    OpenAI · gpt-transcribe

    Source · read 20 Oct 2026

    A$0.39US$0.27

    Assumptions

    Sixty minutes of recorded audio, priced at the published per-minute rate. 60 × US$0.0045. The model page prices transcription audio duration at US$0.0045 per minute. The file-transcription guide caps one file at 25 MB (https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/speech-to-text), so an hour may need to be split or compressed. Splitting is not given a different per-minute price on that page.

    Formula: 60 × US$0.0045.

    Pricing basis

    Per-minute API list price

    Australian business notes

    OpenAI's data-controls guide lists Australia at au.api.openai.com with regional storage yes and regional processing no. It says non-US regions require abuse-monitoring approval and a modified-retention amendment, and that without regional processing OpenAI may process and temporarily store customer content outside the region. An asterisk on Australia says image support needs approval for enhanced zero data retention or enhanced modified abuse monitoring. The API pricing page says data-residency endpoints cost 10% more for eligible models released on or after 5 March 2026 (https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing). The USD figure in this row is the standard list price, not that uplift. The pricing page does not mention AUD or GST. AUD in this row is USD divided by 0.6975, the RBA United States dollar rate per Australian dollar on 2026-10-19. Australian note source.

    Exact figure

    Calculated total: US$0.27 (A$0.387097). These are the unrounded totals. The figure above is a shorter reading of the same amounts.

    Source

    Pricing page

    Read 2026-10-20.