Case Study

Humain: YouTube Intelligence
Powered by Ultra-Low-Cost AI

Discover how Humain built a profitable YouTube content platform processing thousands of videos monthly at 20× lower costs than OpenAI – enabling a scalable freemium business model with deAPI.

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The Challenge

Building a video intelligence platform with freemium pricing seemed financially impossible. Processing 10,000 hours of video with OpenAI's Whisper API costs around $3,600 – before infrastructure, storage, or additional AI costs for summaries and chat features.

For a startup offering free tier access, these economics don't work. Users expect free minutes included, but margins evaporate when transcription alone costs thousands of dollars monthly.

Key Problems

  • High transcription costs: Processing thousands of hours monthly makes freemium pricing nearly impossible
  • Manual monitoring: No way to automatically track favorite channels for new content
  • No semantic search: Can't ask questions or find specific topics across video content
  • Time-consuming: Must watch entire videos to find relevant information

Powered by deAPI

  • Video Transcription: Powered by Whisper large-v3 for accurate transcripts with timestamps
  • Semantic Search: Text embeddings enable search by meaning, not just keywords
  • 20× lower costs: Decentralized infrastructure enables profitable freemium pricing
  • Unified API: Single integration for all AI capabilities – transcription and embeddings

The Solution

Humain leverages deAPI's decentralized AI infrastructure to build a comprehensive YouTube intelligence platform. Users follow their favorite channels and automatically receive transcripts and AI-generated summaries of every new video.

The platform goes beyond basic transcription by enabling conversational search – users can ask questions about video content and get instant answers with exact timestamps.

How It Works

Step 1

Monitor Channels

Users follow YouTube channels. New videos trigger automatic processing – no manual work required.

Step 2

AI Transcription

deAPI converts videos to accurate transcripts with timestamps using Whisper large-v3, at 20× lower cost than alternatives.

Step 3

Smart Search

Transcripts are indexed with deAPI embeddings, enabling semantic search across all content by meaning, not just keywords.

Step 4

Instant Delivery

Users receive AI summaries and can chat with video content – asking questions and getting answers with exact timestamps.

Key Features Built on deAPI

Automatic Channel Monitoring

Subscribe to any YouTube channel and receive instant notifications when new content is published. Set custom preferences for each channel – choose summary style, AI model, and notification method.

Chat with Videos

Ask questions about any video in natural language. Get instant answers with exact timestamps and transcript excerpts. Perfect for research, learning, and content discovery.

Multi-Style Summaries

Generate different types of summaries for the same video: comprehensive overviews, brief highlights, detailed analysis, or educational notes. Save custom prompt templates for recurring needs.

Semantic Search

Search across all your transcripts by meaning, not just keywords. Find relevant content even when exact words don't match. Filter by channel, date, or topic.

The Results

20×

Lower Costs

compared to OpenAI Whisper API

100%

Automated

from video upload to summary delivery

Instant

Search

across thousands of hours of content

Business Impact

Enabled freemium model: Ultra-low costs allow Humain to offer free transcription minutes, converting users to paid plans for bulk processing

Scalable architecture: Queue-based processing with deAPI handles thousands of concurrent transcriptions without infrastructure overhead

Faster time-to-market: Unified API eliminated need to integrate multiple AI providers and manage GPU infrastructure

Unique value proposition: Conversational AI features powered by embeddings differentiate from simple transcription tools

Product Showcase

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Why Humain Chose deAPI

Building a video intelligence platform requires powerful AI capabilities at scale. Here's why deAPI was the right choice:

💰 Economics That Work

20× cheaper than OpenAI – enabling profitable freemium pricing from day one.

Processing 10,000 hours: ~$3,600 (OpenAI) → $100-360

🚀 Fast Time-to-Market

Single API for video transcription and embeddings – no need to manage multiple providers or GPU infrastructure.

📈 Unlimited Scale

Decentralized infrastructure scales automatically – from 10 videos to 10,000+ monthly without infrastructure changes.

🎯 Production-Ready AI

Access to Whisper large-v3 for transcription and state-of-the-art embeddings for semantic search – battle-tested models.

Frequently Asked Questions

Humain goes beyond simple transcription by combining automatic video monitoring, AI-powered summaries, and conversational search. Users follow YouTube channels and automatically receive transcripts and summaries of new videos, with the ability to ask questions and get instant answers with timestamps.
deAPI's decentralized infrastructure delivers 20× lower costs than OpenAI's Whisper API. As of November 10, 2025, OpenAI charges $0.36/hour while deAPI costs just $0.02/hour. This means Humain can offer generous free tiers (free transcription minutes) while maintaining healthy margins – a business model that would be challenging with higher API costs eating into revenue.
Humain leverages two core deAPI capabilities: video-to-text transcription using Whisper large-v3 for accurate transcripts, and text embeddings for semantic search functionality. This unified API eliminates the need to manage multiple AI providers.
Absolutely! deAPI provides all the AI infrastructure you need: video transcription and embeddings for semantic search. Start building immediately with $20 free credits and comprehensive API documentation. Go from idea to production in days, not months.

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