# Amazon Transcribe vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text

> Amazon Transcribe has a score of 73.6 (BB) against Google Cloud Speech-to-Text's 70.4 (BB). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is security & auth, 15 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 Google Cloud Speech-to-Text's 70.4 (BB). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is security & auth, 15 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
- Google Cloud Speech-to-Text: grade BB, 70.4/100, rank #98 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-speech-to-text.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-speech-to-text.json

## Which one, for what

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

Pick Google Cloud Speech-to-Text for security & auth (+15).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon Transcribe | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 95 | 85 | Amazon Transcribe +10 |
| 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 | 70 | Amazon Transcribe +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 80 | 95 | Google Cloud 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 | 25 | Amazon Transcribe +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 88 | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **73.6 · BB** | **70.4 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon Transcribe | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Google Cloud |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://transcribe.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | `https://speech.googleapis.com/v2` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) | Apache-2.0 (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 | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 185 stars, 506k npm/wk, 201k PyPI/wk | 713k npm/wk, 3.7M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 3/5 (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.

**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.

## 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

### 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

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