# Amazon Transcribe vs AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal)

> Amazon Transcribe has a score of 73.6 (BB) against AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal)'s 67 (B). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 45 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

Amazon Transcribe has a score of 73.6 (BB) against AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal)'s 67 (B). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 45 points.

- Amazon Transcribe: grade BB, 73.6/100, rank #57 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-transcribe.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-transcribe.json
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal): grade B, 67/100, rank #148 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/assemblyai-stt.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/assemblyai-stt.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Amazon Transcribe for reliability (+25), security & auth (+30), transparency & trust (+7).

Pick AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) for schema & documentation (+5), payments & pricing (+20), maintenance & community (+45).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon Transcribe | AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 95 | 70 | Amazon Transcribe +25 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 90 | 95 | AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 80 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 80 | 50 | Amazon Transcribe +30 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 35 | 80 | AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) +45 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 78 | Amazon Transcribe +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **73.6 · BB** | **67 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon Transcribe | AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | AssemblyAI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://transcribe.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | `https://api.assemblyai.com/v2` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) | MIT (SDKs) |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-24 |
| Popularity | 185 stars, 506k npm/wk, 201k PyPI/wk | 213 stars, 600k npm/wk, 738k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Amazon Transcribe.** $0.006 a minute batch and $0.01 streaming in US East, with diarisation, custom vocabulary and language ID included. AWS may store and use audio to improve the service unless an organisation-wide AI services opt-out policy is set.

**AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal).** OpenAPI 3.1 file with typed inputs and error responses on every operation. Two outages of an hour or more in the last 90 days, on 31 July and 16 September 2026.

## Before you call either

### Amazon Transcribe

1. Give every job a unique `TranscriptionJobName`. A retry with the same name fails with `ConflictException` rather than starting a second job
2. Batch is a job. Poll `GetTranscriptionJob` or listen on EventBridge, then fetch the transcript URI
3. Set `OutputBucketName`, because job records are deleted after 90 days
4. Back off on `LimitExceededException`. It arrives as a 400, not a 429
5. Set the organisation's AI services opt-out policy before sending customer audio

### AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal)

1. Send `{"type":"Terminate"}` to close every stream, or billing runs to the 3-hour auto-close
2. Use `speech_models` (plural). The singular `speech_model` now returns 400 for current model names
3. Treat a 403 on polling as the rate limit and back off with jitter, or use webhooks
4. Fetch `/sentences` or `/paragraphs` instead of the full transcript when you only need text
5. Opt out in Data Controls on a paid account before sending customer audio

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