# Amazon Transcribe vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text

> Amazon Transcribe has a score of 73.6 (BB) against Speechmatics Speech-to-Text's 67.3 (B). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 40 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Amazon Transcribe has a score of 73.6 (BB) against Speechmatics Speech-to-Text's 67.3 (B). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 40 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
- Speechmatics Speech-to-Text: grade B, 67.3/100, rank #145 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/speechmatics-stt.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/speechmatics-stt.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Amazon Transcribe for reliability (+25), schema & documentation (+25), security & auth (+15), transparency & trust (+7).

Pick Speechmatics Speech-to-Text for payments & pricing (+20), maintenance & community (+40).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon Transcribe | Speechmatics Speech-to-Text | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 95 | 70 | Amazon Transcribe +25 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 90 | 65 | Amazon Transcribe +25 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 80 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 80 | 65 | Amazon Transcribe +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | Speechmatics Speech-to-Text +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 35 | 75 | Speechmatics Speech-to-Text +40 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 78 | Amazon Transcribe +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **73.6 · BB** | **67.3 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon Transcribe | Speechmatics Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Speechmatics |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://transcribe.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | `https://eu1.asr.api.speechmatics.com/v2` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) | MIT (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 | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-22 |
| Popularity | 185 stars, 506k npm/wk, 201k PyPI/wk | 20 stars, 58k npm/wk, 48k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (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.

**Speechmatics Speech-to-Text.** Training is opt-in and real-time audio is not stored. Enhanced transcription costs $0.40 to $0.43 an hour.

## 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

### Speechmatics Speech-to-Text

1. Set `"model": "enhanced"` explicitly. The default is `standard`
2. Use notifications instead of polling. Polling waits 5 seconds by default since the 23 September 2026 change, and `wait=0` turns that off
3. Fetch batch transcripts within 7 days. After that the API returns 404 `expired`
4. Pass a `fetch_data` URL for files over 1 GB
5. Use `/v2/agent` with `linden-1` for live agents instead of the plain realtime path

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