Microsoft launches MAI-Transcribe-2, claiming the most accurate and cheapest speech recognition at $0.10/hour
On 2026-09-03 Microsoft AI released MAI-Transcribe-2, an in-house speech-to-text model for 60 languages with diarization and word timestamps, claiming #1 on FLEURS (5.2% average WER), ~10x faster processing than GPT-Transcribe, and a promotional price of $0.10 per audio hour in Azure Speech / Foundry.
Key facts
- Released 2026-09-03; public preview in Azure Speech (Fast Transcription API, enhancedMode model MAI-Transcribe-2)
- 60 languages (up from 43 in MAI-Transcribe-1.5); code-switching, automatic language ID
- FLEURS: 5.2% average WER across 60 languages, 3.4% on the top 25 (Microsoft); #2 on Artificial Analysis WER leaderboard
- Speed: 1 hour of audio in ~10 s; ~10x faster than GPT-Transcribe, 7x than Scribe v2, 5x than Gemini 3.5 (Microsoft)
- New: speaker diarization, word-level timestamps, keyword biasing, verbatim/clean styles
- Price: $0.10/hour promo through end of 2026 (MAI-Transcribe-1.5 was $0.36/hour)
- Same day (2026-09-03) Microsoft also open-sourced VibeVoice-ASR-Streaming; Meta launched Muse Voice Transcribe
What happened
Three months after MAI-Transcribe-1.5 debuted at Build, Microsoft AI shipped its second-generation transcription model,
adding diarization and timestamps and expanding to 60 languages. It is available in Microsoft Foundry / Azure Speech,
the MAI Playground and OpenRouter (microsoft/mai-transcribe-2), and can also transcribe input audio in Azure Voice Live.
Why it matters
Speech-to-text prices collapsed in September 2026: MAI-Transcribe-2 ($0.10/hr promo), Grok Voice Transcribe 2.0 ($0.10/hr batch, 2026-09-18) and Meta's Muse Voice Transcribe ($0.18/hr, 2026-09-03) all undercut OpenAI's GPT-Transcribe ($0.27/hr) and whisper-1 ($0.36/hr). Accuracy and speed claims are Microsoft's own.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created
- 2026-09-29: linked the Azure Realtime / Voice Live entry
Models
- MAI-Transcribe-2 Microsoft · preview
Related events
- Microsoft makes its own Azure Realtime speech-to-speech model generally available in the Voice Live API ★★
- Microsoft launches seven in-house MAI models at Build 2026, led by MAI-Thinking-1 ★★★★
- Meta launches Muse Voice Transcribe, its first real-time speech model on the Meta Model API ★★★
Sources (4)
- officialMicrosoft AI - MAI-Transcribe-2 is the fastest, most accurate and cheapest speech recognition model
- docsMicrosoft Learn - MAI-Transcribe-2
- paperMAI-Transcribe-2 model card (PDF)
- pressNeowin - MAI-Transcribe-2 beats OpenAI and Google at $0.10 per hour
id: 2026-09-03-mai-transcribe-2 · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline