---
id: "2026-09-03-mai-transcribe-2"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-03-mai-transcribe-2/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2026-09-03"
date_precision: day
category: model-release
importance: 3
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 4
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-03-mai-transcribe-2/

# 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.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 126 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): 65 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): 156 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 95 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [Microsoft AI - MAI-Transcribe-2 is the fastest, most accurate and cheapest speech recognition model](https://microsoft.ai/news/mai-transcribe-2-is-the-fastest-most-accurate-and-cheapest-speech-recognition-model-in-the-world/) (microsoft.ai, official)
2. [Microsoft Learn - MAI-Transcribe-2](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/speech-service/mai-transcribe) (learn.microsoft.com, docs)
3. [MAI-Transcribe-2 model card (PDF)](https://microsoft.ai/pdf/MAI-Transcribe-2-Model-Card.pdf) (microsoft.ai, paper)
4. [Neowin - MAI-Transcribe-2 beats OpenAI and Google at $0.10 per hour](https://www.neowin.net/news/microsofts-mai-transcribe-2-model-beats-openai-and-google-while-costing-just-010-per-hour/) (neowin.net, press)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29: Linked the Azure Realtime / Voice Live entry
- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2026-09-03: [Meta launches Muse Voice Transcribe, its first real-time speech model on the Meta Model API](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-03-meta-muse-voice-transcribe/index.md)
- 2026-07-25: [Microsoft makes its own Azure Realtime speech-to-speech model generally available in the Voice Live API](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-07-25-azure-realtime-voice-live/index.md)
- 2026-06-02: [Microsoft launches seven in-house MAI models at Build 2026, led by MAI-Thinking-1](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-06-02-microsoft-mai-models-build-2026/index.md)
- Models: [MAI-Transcribe-2](https://postcutoff.com/m/mai-transcribe-2/) (`mai-transcribe-2`)