Head to head · Speech stt · October 2026 research run
Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Groq Speech-to-Text
Groq Speech-to-Text scores 71.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux)'s 70.3 (BB), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community. Both do speech stt.
Which one, for what
Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) BB
Good for Live voice agents that want turn detection in the STT model, and for cheap English batch.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 95 against 58
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 68
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
Training on audio is the default and the opt-out is a per-request flag
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 65
- Security & auth, 79 against 65
- Transparency & trust, 85 against 72
Watch for
No streaming or realtime endpoint and no diarisation in the reviewed documentation
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) | Groq Speech-to-Text | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 65 | 90 | Groq Speech-to-Text +25 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 95 | 58 | Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) +37 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 75 | 75 | even |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 65 | 79 | Groq Speech-to-Text +14 |
| 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 | Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) +12 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 72 | 85 | Groq Speech-to-Text +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 70.3 · BB | 71.8 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) | Groq Speech-to-Text |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Deepgram | Groq |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.deepgram.com/v1 | https://api.groq.com/openai/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio, SSE (legacy) | 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 | 2026-09-29 | 2026-08-26 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-06 | 2026-06-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2021-10-26 | 2025-11-12 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 468 stars, 1.1M npm/wk, 805k PyPI/wk | 621 stars |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |
Verdicts
Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux)
Flux streams with model-level end-of-turn detection, so a voice agent needs no separate VAD. Training on audio is the default and the opt-out is a per-request flag.
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
Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux)
- Add
mip_opt_out=trueto every request that carries customer audio - Use Flux (
flux-general-en) on/v2/listenfor live agents and Nova-3 for files - Back off exponentially on 429. The concurrency limit is per project
- Pass
callbackfor long files so the request doesn't hit the 10-minute processing timeout - Mint keys with an expiry for short-lived jobs
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, Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) or Groq Speech-to-Text?
Groq Speech-to-Text scores 71.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux)'s 70.3 (BB), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community.
Do Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) and Groq Speech-to-Text need an API key?
Both need an API key.
Can an agent call Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) and Groq Speech-to-Text without installing anything?
Yes. Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) has a hosted endpoint at https://api.deepgram.com/v1 and Groq Speech-to-Text at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1.
Other comparisons with Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) or Groq Speech-to-Text
- Amazon Transcribe vs Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux)
- Amazon Transcribe vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux)
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Azure AI Speech speech-to-text vs Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux)
- Azure AI Speech speech-to-text vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API
- Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP
- Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text
- Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Mistral Voxtral Transcribe
- Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Rev AI Speech-to-Text API
- Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Soniox Speech-to-Text
- Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Speechmatics 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/deepgram-stt-vs-groq-speech-to-text.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/deepgram-stt.json·/api/v1/tools/groq-speech-to-text.json - From a terminal
anchor compare deepgram-stt groq-speech-to-text(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "deepgram-stt", "b": "groq-speech-to-text"}at/mcp, no key