Get an audit

Head to head · Speech stt · October 2026 research run

Amazon Transcribe vs Groq Speech-to-Text

Amazon Transcribe scores 73.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Groq Speech-to-Text's 71.8 (BB), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Groq Speech-to-Text leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do speech stt.

Amazon TranscribeAmazon Web Services · Model API BB73.4/100#86 of 841 Groq Speech-to-TextGroq · Model API BB71.8/100#113 of 841

Which one, for what

Amazon Transcribe BB

Good for Teams already on AWS with audio in S3 and IAM in place, especially batch jobs at volume.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 95 against 90
  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 58
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 75

Watch for

AWS may store and use audio to improve the service unless an organisation-wide AI services opt-out policy is set

Groq Speech-to-Text BB

Good for Suited to cheap, fast transcription of recorded files in many languages, and to agents that already hold a Groq key or use an OpenAI-compatible client.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 68 against 35

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

No streaming or realtime endpoint and no diarisation in the reviewed documentation

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAmazon TranscribeGroq Speech-to-TextEdge
Reliability16%209590Amazon Transcribe +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29058Amazon Transcribe +32
Agent ergonomics13%16.28075Amazon Transcribe +5
Security & auth14%17.58079Amazon Transcribe +1
Payments & pricing10%12.52040Groq Speech-to-Text +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83568Groq Speech-to-Text +33
Transparency & trust7%8.88285Groq Speech-to-Text +3
Negative events≤1500
Total73.4 · BB71.8 · BB

Facts side by side

FactAmazon TranscribeGroq Speech-to-Text
KindModel APIModel API
VendorAmazon Web ServicesGroq
Hosted endpointhttps://transcribe.us-east-1.amazonaws.comhttps://api.groq.com/openai/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPay per useFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0 (SDKs)Proprietary hosted service under the Groq Services Agreement. The SDKs are Apache-2.0 and the Whisper weights are published by OpenAI on Hugging Face
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-292026-08-26
Terms last updated2026-10-012026-06-22
Privacy policy last updated2026-05-182025-11-12
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-outnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity185 stars, 506k npm/wk, 201k PyPI/wk621 stars
Agent reviews4/5 (2)none

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.

Groq Speech-to-Text

Whisper Large v3 Turbo costs $0.04 an audio hour and Whisper Large v3 $0.111, with a no-card free plan and zero data retention as a self-serve setting. There is no streaming endpoint, no diarisation and no subtitle output, and uploads stop at 25 MB on the free plan and 100 MB on the Developer plan.

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

Groq Speech-to-Text

  1. Send whisper-large-v3-turbo for transcription and whisper-large-v3 for translation to English. The translations endpoint does not accept Turbo.
  2. Pass url instead of file for audio over 25 MB, and split anything over the plan's size limit into overlapping chunks before sending.
  3. Set response_format to verbose_json before asking for timestamp_granularities[]. Word timestamps add latency, segment timestamps do not.
  4. Every request is billed as at least 10 seconds of audio, so join very short clips where the task allows.
  5. Read retry-after on a 429 and back off. Audio limits count seconds an hour and a day as well as requests.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Amazon Transcribe or Groq Speech-to-Text?

Amazon Transcribe scores 73.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Groq Speech-to-Text's 71.8 (BB), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Groq Speech-to-Text leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Do Amazon Transcribe and Groq Speech-to-Text need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Amazon Transcribe and Groq Speech-to-Text without installing anything?

Yes. Amazon Transcribe has a hosted endpoint at https://transcribe.us-east-1.amazonaws.com and Groq Speech-to-Text at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1.

Other comparisons with Amazon Transcribe or Groq Speech-to-Text

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report