# ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API vs Smallest.ai Pulse STT (slim)

> ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text scores 73 (BB) to Smallest.ai Pulse STT's 65 (B) for speech-to-text. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- 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
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ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API scores 73 (BB) on agent readiness against Smallest.ai Pulse STT's 65 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do speech-to-text.

- ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API: BB 73, rank #114 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/elevenlabs-scribe.min.md
- Smallest.ai Pulse STT: B 65, rank #443 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/smallest-pulse-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 63; Agent ergonomics, 75 against 66; Security & auth, 65 against 52. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Runs on your own machine.
- Smallest.ai Pulse STT, good for Low-cost transcription for voice agents and call analytics, with Indic coverage and turn detection.

| Category | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API | Smallest.ai Pulse STT |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 63 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 95 | 92 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 75 | 66 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 65 | 52 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 77 | 73 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 71 | 71 |

| Fact (where they differ) | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API | Smallest.ai Pulse STT |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | ElevenLabs | Smallest AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, websocket |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Licence | MIT (SDKs) | none |
| Tools exposed | none | 0 |
| Last release | 2026-10-27 | 2026-11-02 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-03-31 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-20 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | 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:
- Reliability, ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +17: 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.); Smallest.ai Pulse STT 63 (BetterStack status page at status.smallest.ai with components for the Global, India and USA APIs (one health check covers the Agents and Models APIs), docs, the app and Electron, and per-component history (20). In the 90 days from 8 August the health checks on the shared API failed in all three regions on 9, 10, 13, 14 and 15 September (about 8, 21, 33, 17 and 64 minutes of flapping), in the Global and India regions on 11 and 17 September (12 minutes each), and in the USA region alone on 1, 3, 5, 12, 21 and 30 September (6 to 62 minutes) and 6 October (12 minutes). Outages in every region at once are read as wide errors, so several majors (0). Standard plan limits published per model, 100 concurrent streaming sessions and 25 batch requests a minute, and the pricing page also says 100 concurrent STT streams (15). 429 is documented with exponential backoff from 500 ms to 30 s and Retry-After when present, and batch calls are synchronous with optional webhooks (15). An infrastructure SLA of 99.99 per cent is named for Enterprise only, with no terms published, and the terms disclaim any availability commitment (5 of 10). Pulse, Pulse 2.0 and Pulse Pro carry no preview label, but eleven language codes are marked Beta (8 of 10). 20 + 0 + 15 + 15 + 5 + 8 = 63.)
- Security & auth, ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API +13: ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API 65 (Model reading of the checklist, with training and retention in place of least-privilege and injection lines. Keys can be restricted to chosen endpoints, given a credit quota and limited to IP addresses or CIDR ranges, user keys can expire after 15 minutes to 30 days, service accounts hold keys that don't belong to a person, and leaked keys found by GitHub secret scanning are disabled, re-read on 1 November. Realtime browser clients use single-use tokens, which we don't deduct for (30). The Privacy Policy (updated 9 October 2026, re-read on 1 November) says ElevenLabs may train on personal data, with an opt-out under Data use that only covers data sent after it's set (10). Speech-to-text audio and transcripts are kept by default and zero retention through `enable_logging=false` is Enterprise only, though the zero retention page now names every `/v1/speech-to-text/` endpoint (5). The Developers page has a Request Log that lists every API request with search, filters and CSV export, and usage can be broken down by API key, though we found no audit log of key actions below Enterprise (10 of 15, was 5). A valid security.txt (expiring 6 October 2027, re-read on 1 November) pointing to a vulnerability disclosure programme, and the Eleven v4 launch page states SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and PCI DSS Level 1 certification for every ElevenLabs model. We count those as vendor claims because we saw no report, and the trust centre wasn't re-read. No bug bounty or public advisories found (10 of 20, was 5, as the ElevenLabs text-to-speech listing reads the same evidence). 30 + 10 + 5 + 10 + 10 = 65.); Smallest.ai Pulse STT 52 (Model reading of the checklist, with training and retention in place of the least-privilege and injection lines. Plain `sk_` keys per organisation, shown once, revoked at once and deletable, with one key per environment advised. The docs say a key grants full account access, and no scope is offered. Short-lived access tokens (`wat_`, 30 to 900 seconds) cover only inference routes and can't mint tokens (22 of 30). The error reference documents the key as a `?token=` query parameter for browser WebSockets, and the token guide passes access tokens as `?api_key=` on the STT socket, so 10 off (12 of 30). The terms (21 October 2026) say Smallest won't use user content or input to train or improve its services. The privacy policy (18 September 2026) lists improving the services with machine learning as a use of usage data and doesn't address uploaded audio or text either way (15 of 20). Zero data retention and the `x-expire-content` header are Enterprise only, or a $1,000 a month HIPAA add-on on pay as you go. Other plans keep content readable in logs and the dashboard, with no retention period published (5 of 15). Usage is tracked per key, request rows sit in a dashboard log viewer, and every response carries `x-request-id`. No audit log of key actions was found (10 of 15). security.txt is valid to 31 December 2026 and the site footer claims SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA compliance, while the pricing page lists SOC 2 compliance only on Enterprise. No bug bounty, disclosure policy or public advisories found (10 of 20). Total 52.)
- 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.); Smallest.ai Pulse STT 66 (API reading of the checklist. Word timestamps, utterances, diarisation, emotion and gender are each opt-in, so the default response is the transcript with metadata (18 of 25). There are no list endpoints for transcriptions to page. Output controls are the opt-in fields and finalisation settings on the socket (10 of 20). Errors carry a status and a machine-readable `code` or `error_code` (`LANGUAGE_NOT_SUPPORTED_BY_MODEL`, `AudioTooLong` and others) with fixes, but the body comes in two shapes, `message` or `error` (15 of 20). Batch calls are synchronous with no idempotency key, and whether a retried file is billed again isn't stated (10 of 20). A file call needs only the model and audio. Official Python and Node SDKs exist, though the Node SDK was last published in May 2025 (13 of 15). Total 66.)

| Task | ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API | Smallest.ai Pulse STT |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Transcribe a one-hour meeting | $0.22 to $0.39 | $0.18 to $0.30 |