Amazon Transcribe vs Rev AI Speech-to-Text API

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.

Rev AI Speech-to-Text API

Reverb English at $0.20 an hour, foreign languages at $0.30. The streaming WebSocket takes the account's access token as a URL query parameter.

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

Rev AI Speech-to-Text API

1. Keep streaming URLs out of logs. They carry access_token
2. Send source_config: {"url": ...}, not media_url, even though the published SDKs still use media_url
3. Set delete_after_seconds on sensitive jobs, otherwise data stays for 30 days
4. Use notification_config webhooks rather than polling job status
5. Don't build on low_cost or fusion. Both are deprecated