# Cartesia Ink vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text (slim)

> Google Cloud Speech-to-Text scores 70.2 (BB) to Cartesia Ink's 67.9 (B) for speech-to-text. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-google-speech-to-text.md (~2,750 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-google-speech-to-text.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-google-speech-to-text
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Cartesia Ink's 67.9 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Cartesia Ink leads on schema & documentation, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do speech-to-text.

- Cartesia Ink: B 67.9, rank #238 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cartesia-ink-stt.min.md
- Google Cloud Speech-to-Text: BB 70.2, rank #159 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-speech-to-text.min.md
- Cartesia Ink, good for Suited to voice agents that need turn detection and transcription from one model in English, French, Hindi, Japanese or Spanish, and to teams already using Cartesia text-to-speech. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 89 against 80; Payments & pricing, 35 against 20; Maintenance & community, 85 against 25.
- Google Cloud Speech-to-Text, good for Google Cloud teams with audio already in Cloud Storage who want no training and no retention by default. Ahead on Reliability, 85 against 73; Security & auth, 95 against 52; Transparency & trust, 86 against 67. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better.

| Category | Cartesia Ink | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 73 | 85 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 89 | 80 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 74 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 52 | 95 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 35 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 25 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 67 | 86 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cartesia Ink | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cartesia | Google Cloud |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.cartesia.ai` | `https://speech.googleapis.com/v2` |
| Transports | HTTP, websocket, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under the Cartesia Terms of Service. The Python and JavaScript SDKs are Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-28 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-06-14 | 2026-09-02 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-06-14 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 134 stars | 713k npm/wk, 3.7M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |