What types of audio URLs can I use with the API?
Your audio URL must:
- Be accessible by our servers
- Point directly to an audio/video file
You can upload your file directly to AssemblyAI’s servers using our upload endpoint - check out our transcription guide to get started.
Alternatively, you can host your files elsewhere. Common approaches are to:
- AWS presigned URLs (cookbook)
- Google Drive (cookbook) - for files smaller than 100MB
- GitHub (cookbook) - for files smaller than 100MB
- Cloud storage services (GCP/Azure/AWS)
- Any direct download URL that serves audio/video content
Time-limited URLs must be fresh at submission time. If you use presigned URLs (AWS S3, GCP, Azure SAS tokens) or CDN URLs from platforms like TikTok or Instagram, generate the URL immediately before submitting your request to /v2/transcript. If the URL expires before AssemblyAI downloads the file, the transcription will fail with a download error. For more details, see the Troubleshoot Common Errors guide.
API Reference: Upload endpoint
