Amazon Transcribe vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text

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.

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text

Audio isn't stored or used for training unless the project opts in to data logging. No release note since 2025-11-13.

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

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text

1. Call Chirp 3 on the us or eu endpoint. It isn't listed for the global location
2. Reopen streams before the 5-minute limit, or use BatchRecognize for recordings
3. Downmix stereo unless you need channel labels, since each channel is billed
4. Set dynamic batch on offline jobs to cut the price from $0.016 to $0.003 a minute
5. Back off on RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED. The Speech docs don't give a retry interval