Head to head · Speech stt · October 2026 research run
AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Groq Speech-to-Text
Groq Speech-to-Text scores 71.8 (BB) on agent readiness against AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal)'s 66.8 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and maintenance & community. Both do speech stt.
Which one, for what
AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) B
Good for Async transcription of long files with diarisation and subtitles, and for teams who want an OpenAPI contract.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 95 against 58
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 75
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 68
Watch for
Two outages of an hour or more in the last 90 days, on 31 July and 16 September 2026
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
- Reliability, 90 against 70
- Security & auth, 79 against 50
- Transparency & trust, 85 against 76
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- No incidents deducted, where AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) loses 3 points for them
Watch for
No streaming or realtime endpoint and no diarisation in the reviewed documentation
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) | Groq Speech-to-Text | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 70 | 90 | Groq Speech-to-Text +20 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 95 | 58 | AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) +37 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 80 | 75 | AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) +5 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 50 | 79 | Groq Speech-to-Text +29 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 40 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 80 | 68 | AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) +12 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 76 | 85 | Groq Speech-to-Text +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| Total | 66.8 · B | 71.8 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) | Groq Speech-to-Text |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | AssemblyAI | Groq |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.assemblyai.com/v2 | https://api.groq.com/openai/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (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 | 2026-09-24 | 2026-08-26 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-01 | 2026-06-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-26 | 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 | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 213 stars, 600k npm/wk, 738k PyPI/wk | 621 stars |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |
Verdicts
AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal)
OpenAPI 3.1 file with typed inputs and error responses on every operation. Two outages of an hour or more in the last 90 days, on 31 July and 16 September 2026.
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
AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal)
- Send
{"type":"Terminate"}to close every stream, or billing runs to the 3-hour auto-close - Use
speech_models(plural). The singularspeech_modelnow returns 400 for current model names - Treat a 403 on polling as the rate limit and back off with jitter, or use webhooks
- Fetch
/sentencesor/paragraphsinstead of the full transcript when you only need text - Opt out in Data Controls on a paid account before sending customer audio
Groq Speech-to-Text
- Send
whisper-large-v3-turbofor transcription andwhisper-large-v3for translation to English. The translations endpoint does not accept Turbo. - Pass
urlinstead offilefor audio over 25 MB, and split anything over the plan's size limit into overlapping chunks before sending. - Set
response_formattoverbose_jsonbefore asking fortimestamp_granularities[]. Word timestamps add latency, segment timestamps do not. - Every request is billed as at least 10 seconds of audio, so join very short clips where the task allows.
- Read
retry-afteron 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, AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) or Groq Speech-to-Text?
Groq Speech-to-Text scores 71.8 (BB) on agent readiness against AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal)'s 66.8 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and maintenance & community.
Do AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) and Groq Speech-to-Text need an API key?
Both need an API key.
Can an agent call AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) and Groq Speech-to-Text without installing anything?
Yes. AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) has a hosted endpoint at https://api.assemblyai.com/v2 and Groq Speech-to-Text at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1.
Other comparisons with AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) or Groq Speech-to-Text
- Amazon Transcribe vs AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal)
- Amazon Transcribe vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Azure AI Speech speech-to-text
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- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Mistral Voxtral Transcribe
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Rev AI Speech-to-Text API
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Soniox Speech-to-Text
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- Azure AI Speech speech-to-text vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Google Cloud Speech-to-Text vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Groq Speech-to-Text vs Mistral Voxtral Transcribe
- Groq Speech-to-Text vs Rev AI Speech-to-Text API
- Groq Speech-to-Text vs Soniox Speech-to-Text
- Groq Speech-to-Text vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/assemblyai-stt-vs-groq-speech-to-text.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/assemblyai-stt.json·/api/v1/tools/groq-speech-to-text.json - From a terminal
anchor compare assemblyai-stt groq-speech-to-text(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "assemblyai-stt", "b": "groq-speech-to-text"}at/mcp, no key