# Cartesia Ink vs OpenAI Speech to Text (slim)

> OpenAI Speech to Text scores 72.4 (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-openai-speech-to-text.md (~2,900 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-openai-speech-to-text.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-openai-speech-to-text
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

OpenAI Speech to Text scores 72.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Cartesia Ink's 67.9 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Cartesia Ink leads on payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do speech-to-text.

- Cartesia Ink: B 67.9, rank #238 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cartesia-ink-stt.min.md
- OpenAI Speech to Text: BB 72.4, rank #106 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openai-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 Payments & pricing, 35 against 20; Maintenance & community, 85 against 75; Transparency & trust, 67 against 61.
- OpenAI Speech to Text, good for Suited to plain transcription of recorded files at a low price a minute and to teams already holding an OpenAI key. Ahead on Reliability, 80 against 73; Security & auth, 86 against 52. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better.

| Category | Cartesia Ink | OpenAI Speech to Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 73 | 80 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 89 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 74 | 78 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 52 | 86 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 35 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 67 | 61 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cartesia Ink | OpenAI Speech to Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cartesia | OpenAI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.cartesia.ai` | `https://api.openai.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP, websocket, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, websocket |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under the Cartesia Terms of Service. The Python and JavaScript SDKs are Apache-2.0 | Proprietary hosted service. The service terms were not read (see open questions). The Python SDK is Apache-2.0 and the OpenAPI document is MIT |
| Last release | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-26 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-06-14 | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-06-14 | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 134 stars | 32k stars |