# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes…

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-transcribe-vs-groq-speech-to-text
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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

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 Transcribe: grade BB, 73.4/100, rank #86 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-transcribe.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-transcribe.json
- Groq Speech-to-Text: grade BB, 71.8/100, rank #113 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/groq-speech-to-text.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/groq-speech-to-text.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | Amazon Transcribe | Groq 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 | 58 | Amazon Transcribe +32 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 75 | Amazon Transcribe +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 80 | 79 | Amazon Transcribe +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | Groq Speech-to-Text +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 35 | 68 | Groq Speech-to-Text +33 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 85 | Groq Speech-to-Text +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **73.4 · BB** | **71.8 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon Transcribe | Groq Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Groq |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://transcribe.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | `https://api.groq.com/openai/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-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 documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-08-26 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-01 | 2026-06-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-18 | 2025-11-12 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 185 stars, 506k npm/wk, 201k PyPI/wk | 621 stars |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (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.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-transcribe-vs-groq-speech-to-text.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-transcribe-vs-groq-speech-to-text.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "amazon-transcribe", "b": "groq-speech-to-text"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare amazon-transcribe groq-speech-to-text`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-transcribe.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/groq-speech-to-text.json

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