# Amazon Transcribe vs ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API

> Amazon Transcribe has a score of 73.6 (BB) against ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API's 69 (B). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 40 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-04

Amazon Transcribe has a score of 73.6 (BB) against ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API's 69 (B). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 40 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
- ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API: grade B, 69/100, rank #117 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/elevenlabs-scribe.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/elevenlabs-scribe.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Amazon Transcribe for reliability (+25), agent ergonomics (+5), security & auth (+25), transparency & trust (+14).

Pick ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API for schema & documentation (+5), payments & pricing (+20), maintenance & community (+40).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon Transcribe | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API | 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 | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 75 | Amazon Transcribe +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 80 | 55 | Amazon Transcribe +25 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 35 | 75 | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +40 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 71 | Amazon Transcribe +14 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **73.6 · BB** | **69 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon Transcribe | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | ElevenLabs |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://transcribe.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | `https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| 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 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 185 stars, 506k npm/wk, 201k PyPI/wk | 3.1k stars, 1.1M npm/wk, 2.2M 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.

**ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API.** $0.22 an hour for batch with 90+ languages and diarisation to 32 speakers. Audio may be used for training unless the account opts out, and the opt-out isn't retroactive.

## 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

### ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API

1. Create a key restricted to speech-to-text with a credit quota and an expiry
2. Use `source_url` for hosted files instead of downloading and re-uploading
3. Set `webhook=true` for long files so the call doesn't block
4. Back off exponentially on any of the three 429 codes
5. Opt out under Data use before sending customer audio. It only covers later uploads

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