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Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime
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Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime is a closed-weights speech-to-text model from AssemblyAI, released September 2026. Licence: proprietary.
Catalogue identity notes
AssemblyAI's realtime/streaming model, API string universal-3-6-pro (blog 29 September 2026: 'available as universal-3-6-pro'; 32 languages). Realtime-only per the pricing page (listed under Realtime Speech-to-Text API); distinct from the async catalogue model assemblyai-universal-3-5-pro. Pipecat added its universal-3-6-pro results on 2026-09-17 (commit c6b7d83), service contributed by AssemblyAI staff (PR #39 from dlange-aai) — the run itself was merged and published by the Pipecat maintainers.
Score within the Open ASR English short-form WER (March 2026) comparison set only.
$ how it compares
The speech-to-text models ranked either side of Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime, out of 176 with a score, then more from AssemblyAI.
| # | model | score | where | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 |  Grok Voice Transcribe 2.0 | 70±3 | api $0.0017/audio min | ||
| 3 |  Saarika v2.5 | 70±5 | comparison only | ||
| 4 | Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime | 70±3 | api $0.0075/audio min | ||
| 5 |  Linden 1 (Agent STT) | 69±3 | api $0.0050/audio min | ||
| 6 |  Soniox v5 Async | 68±5 | api $0.0017/audio min | ||
| more from AssemblyAI | |||||
| 8 | Universal-3.5 Pro | 67±3 | api $0.0035/audio min | ||
| 17 | Universal-3 Pro | 63±2 | comparison only | ||
| 53 | Universal-Streaming (English) | 58±3 | api $0.0025/audio min | ||
see all speech-to-text models · find the ones that fit your machine
$ what it's good at
other tests1 not in a task · 96% of its score
| test | result | vs the others in its run | counts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pipecat STT Benchmark · pooled semantic WER (1000 smart-turn samples, Sonnet 5.5 judge) | 0.8% ✎ | ▃·▃▅·▅▅·▃▅██ beats 14/16 | 96% |
$ where to run it
Through an API
api · $0.0075/audio min · www.assemblyai.com ↗ · price sourceUSD per input audio minute: AssemblyAI pricing page, Realtime Speech-to-Text API, 'Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime New ... $0.45 /hr' pay as you go (÷60). Product: AssemblyAI Realtime (streaming) STT API. API model: universal-3-6-pro. Price basis: published list rate, per-hour to per-minute scaling only. Exclusions: add-ons (keyterms, diarization etc.), Voice Agent API ($4.50/hr). Currency: USD. AssemblyAI official pricing page, observed 2026-10-09.
$ how the score was worked out · Pipecat STT Benchmark · seman… 96%
Each result implies a score on its own, after adjusting for how hard its test is and who ran it. The score is their weighted average, with a small pull toward the middle for thinly tested models. Each test's weight is its counts column above; here it's added up by who ran the tests. How it works
| source | results | share of the score |
|---|---|---|
 Pipecat STT Benchmark · semantic WER results table (pipecat-ai/stt-benchmark README) | 1 | 96% |
| prior · pull toward the middle | 4% | |
| weighted average | = 70.2 |
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