# ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API vs IBM Watson Speech to Text (slim)

> ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text scores 73 (BB) to IBM Watson Speech to Text's 54.5 (C) for speech-to-text. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/elevenlabs-scribe-vs-ibm-watson-stt.md (~5,350 tokens) · this version ~2,830 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/elevenlabs-scribe-vs-ibm-watson-stt.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/elevenlabs-scribe-vs-ibm-watson-stt
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API scores 73 (BB) on agent readiness against IBM Watson Speech to Text's 54.5 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. IBM Watson Speech to Text leads on transparency & trust. Both do speech-to-text.

- ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API: BB 73, rank #113 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/elevenlabs-scribe.min.md
- IBM Watson Speech to Text: C 54.5, rank #904 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ibm-watson-stt.min.md
- ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API, good for Batch transcription where diarisation, entity detection and keyterms matter, and for teams already on ElevenLabs for speech. Ahead on Reliability, 80 against 40; Schema & documentation, 95 against 55; Agent ergonomics, 75 against 66; Maintenance & community, 77 against 33. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Runs on your own machine.
- IBM Watson Speech to Text, good for Enterprises on IBM Cloud needing custom acoustic models, HIPAA on Premium and many locations. Ahead on Transparency & trust, 80 against 71.

| Category | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API | IBM Watson Speech to Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 40 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 95 | 55 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 75 | 66 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 65 | 68 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 77 | 33 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 71 | 80 |

| Fact (where they differ) | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API | IBM Watson Speech to Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | ElevenLabs | IBM |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, websocket |
| Licence | MIT (SDKs) | none |
| Tools exposed | none | 0 |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-27 | 2026-06-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-03-31 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-20 | 2026-08-25 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| 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 | 3.1k stars, 1.1M npm/wk, 2.2M PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +44: ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API 77 (Read as a model, as the ElevenLabs text-to-speech listing is, in place of the 1 October release-count reading. Newest change is SDK 2.75.0, tagged in the Python and JavaScript repositories on 27 October 2026 (23:02 UTC), and the 26 October changelog entry changed realtime silence thresholds and added transcription webhook retries. Speech to Text also changed on 12 October (`turn_prediction` commit strategy) and 19 October (`edited_text`) (30). Weekly dated entries, 16 between 3 August and 26 October (10). `scribe_v1` is still marked deprecated in favour of `scribe_v2` with no date or notice period (0 of 10). Public changelog and support channels (10 of 15). The Python SDK had 19 open issues on 1 October, several opened in August 2026, per the ElevenLabs text-to-speech listing's 1 October check of the same repository, not re-read on 1 November (5 of 10). Official Python and TypeScript SDKs current at 2.75.0. The local `elevenlabs-mcp` package, the only one with a transcription tool, has been deprecated since 20 August 2026 in favour of the hosted server, its last release 0.12.2 on 4 August (15). Fern-generated SDKs, read as the ElevenLabs text-to-speech listing reads them (7 of 10). 30 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 5 + 15 + 7 = 77.); IBM Watson Speech to Text 33 (Read as a model. The newest release note is 29 June 2026 (`parameter_set` for large speech models), 130 days ago (10). No dated entries in the 90 days from 8 August (0). Release notes, IBM support and a public docs repository last changed 30 June 2026 (8 of 15). Official SDKs, `ibm-watson` 11.2.0 on PyPI (26 January 2026) and 12.2.0 on npm (January 2026) (10 of 15). CI not read (5 of 10). Total 33.)
- Reliability, ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +40: ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API 80 (incident.io status page with a Speech to Text component and dated component history (20). Re-read on 1 November from the history page, which dates each component's impact, as the ElevenLabs text-to-speech, voice cloning and agents listings were read; the incidents feed was re-posted on 21 October and leaves older incidents out. Six incidents touched the Speech to Text component in the 90 days from 3 August. Elevated TTS and STT error rates from 06:39 to 07:13 UTC on 3 August and TTS and STT latency from 15:15 to 17:53 UTC on 26 August, both at degraded performance. Two latency incidents on 4 September, the EU residency from 11:41 to 12:12 UTC and the global residency from 13:55 to 21:01 UTC for "a small subset of requests", and STT latency from 15:42 to 16:05 UTC on 28 September, all degraded. From 16:00 to 19:44 UTC on 29 September a usage datastore fault caused latency, conversation failures and 429s on STT requests, marked partial outage on Speech to Text and Conversations. The 1 October note called it one major of 94 minutes; the page dates the STT impact at 3 hours 44 minutes, and it is read as partial, as the ElevenLabs agents listing read the same incident. A one-minute entry named "Test" on 16 October isn't counted. Nothing has touched STT since 29 September. Minor only (20 of 30, was 10). Concurrency per plan published with numbers, re-read on 1 November, 8 on Free to 60 on Scale for batch and 6 to 45 for realtime, with `current-concurrent-requests` and `maximum-concurrent-requests` headers (15). The error reference names three 429 codes, `rate_limit_exceeded`, `concurrent_limit_exceeded` and `system_busy`, and asks for exponential backoff (15). No SLA found for self-serve plans, and the API pricing page puts SLAs under Enterprise (0). Scribe v2, Scribe v2 Realtime and Scribe v2 Medical carry no alpha or beta label (10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 0 + 10 = 80.); IBM Watson Speech to Text 40 (IBM Cloud has a status page at cloud.ibm.com/status, but it is drawn by script and showed no components or history to our reader, read as gemini-live's script-shell page was (10 of 20, and 5 for no readable history). Plus allows up to 100 concurrent transcription requests across WebSocket and HTTP (15). No 429 or backoff guidance was found in the API reference or the docs repository (0). No SLA was read for the service (0, unchecked). Next-generation and large speech models are GA, language by language (10). 10 + 5 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 40.)
- Schema & documentation, ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +40: ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API 95 (OpenAPI file at api.elevenlabs.io/openapi.json, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November because api.elevenlabs.io's robots.txt disallows every path (25). llms.txt with a Markdown twin of each page, re-read on 1 November (10). Reference pages state what each parameter does, and the docs separate batch, realtime and medical use, though they rarely say when not to use one (15). Multipart fields are typed with enums such as `timestamps_granularity`, and `model_id` is required (15). Examples on each endpoint and an error reference with codes and meanings, re-read on 1 November (15). Versioned `/v1` paths and a dated weekly changelog, the newest entry 26 October (15). 25 + 10 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 95.); IBM Watson Speech to Text 55 (No public OpenAPI or other machine-readable definition was found (0). No llms.txt (0). The reference says which parameters each model family supports and the docs cover each feature (15 of 20). Typed parameters with defaults, ranges and enums (13 of 15). curl and SDK examples on every method, and errors with `error`, `code`, `code_description` and `warnings`, with invalid arguments reported as warnings (12 of 15). Versioned `/v1` paths and dated release notes back to 2015 (15). Total 55.)
- Agent ergonomics, ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +9: ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API 75 (API reading of the checklist. Timestamps can be dropped or set to word or character level, and extra formats such as SRT or plain text come back alongside JSON (20). Transcripts can be fetched by ID, but we didn't find a paginated list for them (10). Typed error codes with messages, `invalid_parameters`, `insufficient_credits` and the 429 family (20). No idempotency key, and `webhook=true` makes the call asynchronous without a dedupe guarantee. Since 26 October transcription webhooks are retried on failure when the webhook's retry setting is on, and requests priced below one credit are charged one credit (10). Two required fields, the model and a file or `source_url`. Official SDKs in Python and TypeScript (15). 20 + 10 + 20 + 10 + 15 = 75.); IBM Watson Speech to Text 66 (API reading of the checklist. Timestamps, word confidence, alternatives and speaker labels are opt-in (15 of 25). Async jobs and custom models list, and async results can go to a callback URL (12 of 20). Structured errors and warnings an agent can act on (15 of 20). Async jobs take a `user_token`, results have a TTL, and jobs can be deleted, with no idempotency key (12 of 20). Most parameters are optional. Official SDKs including Python, Node and Swift, though the Python and Node SDKs last released in January 2026 (12 of 15). Total 66.)
- Transparency & trust, IBM Watson Speech to Text +9: ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API 71 (Closed service with clear terms and MIT SDKs (15). The Privacy Policy, updated 9 October 2026 and re-read on 1 November, allows training on personal data with a forward-only opt-out, and the zero retention page now says every `/v1/speech-to-text/` endpoint is covered for Enterprise customers. We found no speech-to-text statement that contradicts them, though a reader still pieces the position together from three pages (15). `scribe_v1` is marked deprecated without a date or a written policy (5). EU, India and Singapore residency hosts are documented, but no named sub-processor list was found (15). 15 + 15 + 5 + 15 = 50.); IBM Watson Speech to Text 80 (Closed service under the IBM Cloud terms (15). The data security page states default logging for improvement with an opt-out, async retention, GDPR deletion by customer ID and plan-level separation, and they agree with each other. The DPA wasn't read (20 of 30). Previous-generation models carried a dated deprecation of 15 March 2022 and removal on 31 July 2023, and release notes say changes are compatible unless noted (18 of 20). Ten locations are named, with sub-processors not read (12 of 20). Total 65.)

| Task | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API | IBM Watson Speech to Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Transcribe a one-hour meeting | $0.22 to $0.39 | $0.60 to $1.20 |