Speech to text models and APIs.
Transcribe recordings and calls into text. Compare accuracy, languages and speed across open ASR models and partner APIs.
How to pick a speech to text model
Transcription models differ in the languages they know, how they cope with noisy audio, whether they add timestamps and speaker labels, and whether they can transcribe live.
Everyday transcription
ElevenLabs Speech to Text and Whisper Large v3 are the two most used here. Whisper was trained on 680,000 hours of audio and copes well with many languages and accents.
Timestamps and speaker labels
Whisper Medium adds timestamps and optional speaker diarization, which is what you want for meetings and interviews.
Specific languages
Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 covers 25 European languages and detects the language for you. Cohere Transcribe handles 14 languages and is aimed at meetings, calls and archives.
Live transcription
Voxtral Mini 4B Realtime transcribes as people speak, in 13 languages. Nemotron streams English transcripts with punctuation.
Frequently asked questions
How is transcription priced?
Several models charge per second of input audio, so a 10 minute file costs the same however fast it runs. Whisper models are billed by processing time. Each model page shows which applies.
Can it tell speakers apart?
Whisper Medium offers optional speaker diarization. For the other models, check the parameters on the model page.
Can I transcribe a live stream?
Yes, with a realtime model such as Voxtral Mini 4B Realtime. The session runs over a WebSocket and you stream audio in as it is recorded. The realtime speech to text guide shows how.








