Costs
Abe is free. It never charges you anything. In Local mode transcription costs nothing at all. In Cloud mode you pay your provider directly for the audio you send, at their list price. Abe adds nothing on top.
Prices
Section titled “Prices”| Provider | Model | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local | Whisper on your computerRuns offline. You pay only for the electricity. | $0 | $0 |
| Groq | whisper-large-v3-turbo$0.04 per audio hour. 10-second minimum per request. | $0.00067 | $0.04 |
| Groq | whisper-large-v3$0.111 per audio hour. 10-second minimum per request. | $0.0019 | $0.111 |
| OpenAI | gpt-transcribeAbe's default for OpenAI. OpenAI's current transcription model. | $0.0045 | $0.27 |
List prices in USD as of October 22, 2026. Providers change prices; their pricing pages are authoritative.
Notes:
- Groq bills a minimum of 10 seconds per request, so very short clips cost slightly more than the per-minute rate suggests. It’s still a tiny amount.
- You’re only billed for audio you actually send: the time between pressing and releasing the hotkey (or between toggles).
- Voice Transform uses a chat model: Groq’s
openai/gpt-oss-120b($0.15 in / $0.60 out per million tokens) or OpenAI’sgpt-6-luna($0.10 in / $0.50 out). A typical transform is a few hundred tokens, a tiny fraction of a cent.
Calculator
Section titled “Calculator”For scale: most people speak 130 to 160 words a minute, so 30 minutes a day is roughly 4,000 to 5,000 words. Only the time you're actually holding the hotkey counts.