# Amazon Transcribe vs Azure AI Speech speech-to-text

> Azure AI Speech speech-to-text has a score of 77 (BB) against Amazon Transcribe's 73.6 (BB). 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: 2026-10-04

Azure AI Speech speech-to-text has a score of 77 (BB) against Amazon Transcribe's 73.6 (BB). 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
- Azure AI Speech speech-to-text: grade BB, 77/100, rank #23 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/azure-speech-to-text.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/azure-speech-to-text.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Amazon Transcribe for reliability (+5), schema & documentation (+10), agent ergonomics (+5).

Pick Azure AI Speech speech-to-text for security & auth (+15), maintenance & community (+45).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon Transcribe | Azure AI Speech speech-to-text | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 95 | 90 | Amazon Transcribe +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 90 | 80 | Amazon Transcribe +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 75 | Amazon Transcribe +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 80 | 95 | Azure AI Speech speech-to-text +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 35 | 80 | Azure AI Speech speech-to-text +45 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 88 | Azure AI Speech speech-to-text +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **73.6 · BB** | **77 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon Transcribe | Azure AI Speech speech-to-text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Microsoft Azure |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://transcribe.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | `https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) | MIT (samples), SDK under Microsoft's own licence |
| 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 | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 185 stars, 506k npm/wk, 201k PyPI/wk | 3.5k stars, 476k npm/wk, 1M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 3.3/5 (8) |

## 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.

**Azure AI Speech speech-to-text.** Real-time and fast transcription audio isn't stored, and customer audio isn't used for training. MAI-Transcribe-2 is preview with no SLA, and its $0.10 promotional price ends on 2026-12-31.

## 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

### Azure AI Speech speech-to-text

1. Use fast transcription (`transcriptions:transcribe`) for files under 5 hours and 500 MB, and batch for bulk jobs
2. Pin `api-version=2025-10-15`. v3.0 and the v3.2 previews are retired
3. On a 429, back off 1, 2, 4 then 4 minutes. It usually means autoscaling, not a quota
4. Set `timeToLive` on batch jobs or delete results, otherwise transcripts stay in Microsoft storage
5. Don't budget on MAI-Transcribe-2 at $0.10 an hour after 2026-12-31

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