Limits and billing
What you pay for, how credit works, and the limits that protect your account.
What is billed
You pay per hour of audio transcribed, measured from the audio itself and rounded up to the nearest paisa. The price per audio hour is shown in the console and in every GET /v1/usage response (price_paise_per_audio_hour).
| Outcome | Charged |
|---|---|
completed | The measured duration. |
completed with channel_mode: "separate" | The measured duration for each channel that contains speech. A channel that is silent throughout is not charged, so a recording that is silent on every channel costs nothing. |
partial | Nothing. |
failed | Nothing. |
cancelled | Nothing, whether it was queued or running. |
Every transcription leaves a usage record — including the free outcomes — so your accounts always reconcile.
Credit
Your organization holds prepaid credit, shown in the console. When a transcription is accepted, its cost is reserved from available credit at the price in force at that moment; when it finishes, the reservation is settled (charged or released). A transcription is always charged at the price it was accepted at, even if the price changes while it runs, and never more than the amount reserved for it. If available credit cannot cover a request, it is rejected with 402 insufficient_credits before any work starts.
curl "$TWENTYSIX_BASE_URL/v1/usage?limit=20" -H "Authorization: Bearer $TWENTYSIX_API_KEY"{
"object": "usage",
"currency": "INR",
"price_paise_per_audio_hour": 0,
"credit": { "balance_paise": 0, "reserved_paise": 0, "available_paise": 0 },
"data": [
{ "id": "use_…", "transcription_id": "tr_…", "created_at": "…", "billable_seconds": 1834.2, "channels": 1,
"amount_paise": 0, "outcome": "completed", "options": { "language": "hi-IN", "mode": "codemix", "diarization": true } }
],
"next": null
}Amounts are in paise (₹1 = 100 paise). Use next as after to page back through older records.
Recording limits
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Longest recording | 2 hours |
| Largest upload | 2 GB |
| Channels with channel_mode: separate | 2 |
Short audio sent to the synchronous endpoint has its own, smaller limits.
Account limits
Each organization has limits that keep a runaway script from spending your credit:
- requests per minute, per API key;
- transcriptions running at the same time;
- transcriptions waiting in the queue;
- spend per day (India time).
Your organization's current values are in the console under Usage & billing → Limits. Hitting one returns 429 with rate_limited, too_many_queued or spend_limit_reached. Talk to us to raise them.