# ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text

> Google Cloud Speech-to-Text has a score of 70.4 (BB) against ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API's 69 (B). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 50 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: 2026-10-04

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text has a score of 70.4 (BB) against ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API's 69 (B). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 50 points.

- ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API: grade B, 69/100, rank #117 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/elevenlabs-scribe.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/elevenlabs-scribe.json
- Google Cloud Speech-to-Text: grade BB, 70.4/100, rank #98 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-speech-to-text.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-speech-to-text.json

## Which one, for what

Pick ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API for schema & documentation (+15), agent ergonomics (+5), payments & pricing (+20), maintenance & community (+50).

Pick Google Cloud Speech-to-Text for reliability (+15), security & auth (+40), transparency & trust (+17).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 85 | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 95 | 80 | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +15 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 70 | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 95 | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text +40 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 75 | 25 | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +50 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 88 | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text +17 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **69 · B** | **70.4 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | ElevenLabs | Google Cloud |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1` | `https://speech.googleapis.com/v2` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (SDKs) | Apache-2.0 (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 | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 3.1k stars, 1.1M npm/wk, 2.2M PyPI/wk | 713k npm/wk, 3.7M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API.** $0.22 an hour for batch with 90+ languages and diarisation to 32 speakers. Audio may be used for training unless the account opts out, and the opt-out isn't retroactive.

**Google Cloud Speech-to-Text.** Audio isn't stored or used for training unless the project opts in to data logging. No release note since 2025-11-13.

## Before you call either

### ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API

1. Create a key restricted to speech-to-text with a credit quota and an expiry
2. Use `source_url` for hosted files instead of downloading and re-uploading
3. Set `webhook=true` for long files so the call doesn't block
4. Back off exponentially on any of the three 429 codes
5. Opt out under Data use before sending customer audio. It only covers later uploads

### Google Cloud Speech-to-Text

1. Call Chirp 3 on the `us` or `eu` endpoint. It isn't listed for the `global` location
2. Reopen streams before the 5-minute limit, or use `BatchRecognize` for recordings
3. Downmix stereo unless you need channel labels, since each channel is billed
4. Set dynamic batch on offline jobs to cut the price from $0.016 to $0.003 a minute
5. Back off on `RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED`. The Speech docs don't give a retry interval

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