Pricing
Audio Annotation: cost and pricing in India
Indicative rate bands for audio annotation, the five specification decisions that move the number most, and how a fixed quote is put together from a written spec.
- Pricing model
- Per delivered unit, fixed against spec
- Minimum
- ~50 hours or equivalent per language
- Turnaround
- Scoped per label complexity; simple diarisation runs at roughly 3-5x real time.
- Quote time
- One working day
What drives the price of audio annotation
Labelling of existing audio: speaker diarisation, emotion, intent, events, language identification and segment-level quality tagging, against your label schema.
- Language tier: widely spoken languages have deeper recruitment pools and cost less per unit than low-resource ones
- Demographic narrowness: a 50/50 gender split across three age bands is routine; a narrow cohort multiplies recruitment effort
- Label types — Diarisation, emotion, intent, events, language ID, quality. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- Granularity — Segment, utterance, or frame-level boundaries. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- Schema — Yours, or authored with you before work starts. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- Agreement — Multi-annotator overlap on a defined percentage. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- QA threshold and rework policy: a higher accept bar means more re-collection, which is priced in rather than absorbed later
Where the cost sits in audio annotation
Annotators are native speakers with domain briefing, not generic crowd workers.
Turnaround: Scoped per label complexity; simple diarisation runs at roughly 3-5x real time.
Indicative rate bands
| Scope | Unit | Indicative band |
|---|---|---|
| Widely spoken language, standard spec | per delivered hour | ₹3,200 – ₹6,500 |
| Regional language, standard spec | per delivered hour | ₹4,200 – ₹8,200 |
| Low-resource language or narrow cohort | per delivered hour | ₹5,500 – ₹11,000 |
| Verbatim transcription add-on | per audio hour | ₹900 – ₹2,400 |
| Pilot batch (10-20 hours) | fixed | Quoted separately, credited against the full run |
These are bands, not a price list. Two projects with the same hour count can differ by 3x on cohort design alone, which is why every number here is replaced by a fixed figure once we see your specification.
What the price includes
- Labelled data in your schema
- Gold set and calibration results
- Per-label agreement statistics
- Edge-case log
How the quote is built
- Schema definition and edge-case documentation
- Annotator training and gold-set calibration
- Production annotation with gold items seeded in
- Adjudication of disagreements by a senior reviewer
- Delivery with per-label agreement statistics
Where budgets get wasted
The most expensive mistake in a data purchase is buying volume before the specification is settled. Re-collecting 200 hours because the noise profile did not match deployment costs more than the entire QA layer would have.
Gold items are seeded throughout production so drift is caught during the run, not at delivery.
Best suited for
- Diarisation
- Emotion AI
- Intent classification
- Data cleaning
Frequently asked
How much does audio annotation cost per hour in India?
Most programmes land between ₹3,200 and ₹11,000 per delivered unit depending on language tier, cohort narrowness, recording condition and annotation depth. A written specification converts that band into a single fixed number.
Is there a minimum order?
Around 50 hours or equivalent per language for a production run. Pilots of 10-20 hours are accepted when they lead into a larger build, since most setup cost sits in specification and recruitment.
Do you charge for rejected audio?
No. You pay for delivered units that pass the agreed QA threshold. Rejected material is re-collected at our cost.
Can the price be fixed rather than estimated?
Yes. Once the specification is signed the price is fixed against it. Changes to quotas, conditions or annotation depth are re-quoted before work continues.
Related pages
Get a fixed price for audio annotation
Send the volume, languages and quality bar you have in mind and you get a scoped price within a working day.