# Giggy Speech to Text vs Soniox Speech-to-Text

> Soniox Speech-to-Text scores 68.5 (B) to Giggy Speech to Text's 54.5 (C) for speech-to-text. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-soniox-stt
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-soniox-stt.md (~5,850 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-04

Soniox Speech-to-Text scores 68.5 (B) on agent readiness against Giggy Speech to Text's 54.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Giggy Speech to Text leads on payments & pricing. Both do speech-to-text.

- Giggy Speech to Text: grade C, 54.5/100, rank #806 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/giggy-stt.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/giggy-stt.json
- Soniox Speech-to-Text: grade B, 68.5/100, rank #262 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/soniox-stt.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/soniox-stt.json
- Best speech-to-text APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/speech-to-text/index.md
- All 253 stt comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/speech-to-text/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Giggy Speech to Text (C)

Good for: Agents and voice pipelines that need plain transcripts of recorded or live speech at a few cents an hour, or free for clips under 25 minutes, and can convert audio to 16 kHz mono WAV first.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where Soniox Speech-to-Text loses 3 points for them

Watch for: Recorded input must be PCM16 mono 16 kHz WAV, so MP3, M4A, stereo or other sample rates need converting before upload

### Soniox Speech-to-Text (B)

Good for: Price-led multilingual transcription and translation, live or async, and for operators who want no training and no retention.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 77 against 50
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 68
- Security & auth, 87 against 57
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 69
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 30

Watch for: No free credits for new accounts since October 2025


## Why the edge

### Transparency & trust: Soniox Speech-to-Text +46

- Giggy Speech to Text (30): Closed hosted service. The terms exist at /terms but draw by script and could not be read, so their clarity is unknown; the SDK, Pipecat and MCP repositories are ISC and the n8n node MIT (5 of 30). What could be read agrees with itself, no training on user data, an optional 12-hour retention flag, a seven-day window for Batch audio, and the EEA compute flag. The privacy policy, any DPA and a retention period for transcripts were not found or not readable (12 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices, only a statement that the legacy origin remains supported (3 of 20). No subprocessors or data locations are named; the EEA-adequate compute option implies processing outside the EEA by default without saying where (3 of 20). 5+12+3+3 = 23.
- Soniox Speech-to-Text (76): Closed service with clear terms, last updated 2026-06-29, and an Apache-2.0 Python SDK (15). The security page, limits page and pricing page agree on no training, no default retention and 30-day async deletion (25). Model retirements are dated and old names route to the new model (v5 to v6 on 15 December 2026), though the October 2025 retirement of the preview models was described as accelerated (15). A data residency page names region-specific domains for the US, EU, Japan and India, and no sub-processor list was found (15).

### Security & auth: Soniox Speech-to-Text +30

- Giggy Speech to Text (57): Model reading of the checklist, with training and retention in place of the least-privilege and injection lines, as for deepgram-stt and cartesia-ink-stt. Keys prefixed `giggy_sk_` are shown once on creation or rotation, rejected immediately after revocation, limited to ten per space and tied to the space that made them, with REST budgets that Workspace members can set. No scopes or expiry were found. The key travels in a header only, with no query-string option documented (22 of 30). The workspace privacy guide states 'Giggy does not use user data to train models'. The privacy policy and terms draw by script and could not be read to confirm it (18 of 20). Requests can opt into 12-hour content retention and EEA-adequate compute, and a guide gives Batch audio a seven-day window, but no retention period for transcripts was found and results can vanish after an unstated 'retention cleanup' (9 of 15). Generation history per space and a request ID on errors; no audit log of key or admin actions was found (8 of 15). /.well-known/security.txt answered a client error, none of the six repositories has a SECURITY.md, and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found on the pages that rendered; the support page that may name a reporting route drew by script (0 of 20). 22+18+9+8+0 = 57.
- Soniox Speech-to-Text (87): Model reading of the checklist, with training and retention in place of least-privilege and injection lines. "Every API key in a project has a list of permissions": real-time STT, async STT and Files with Read and Write levels, model listing, usage and temporary keys, with `permission_denied` for anything else, and temporary keys that are restricted and expire. Keys go in the WebSocket handshake rather than the URL (30). Customer audio and transcripts are never used for training, per the 1 October check (20). Audio and transcripts aren't retained by default, and async files and transcripts auto-delete after 30 days or on a delete call, per the 1 October check (15). Per-request usage logs with request IDs, duration, tokens and cost (10). SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001:2022, and the Python SDK's SECURITY.md gives a disclosure route with no acknowledgement time, as soniox-tts. No security.txt (404) and no bug bounty (12). 30+20+15+10+12 = 87.

### Reliability: Soniox Speech-to-Text +27

- Giggy Speech to Text (50): Hosted reading, as for deepgram-stt and cartesia-ink-stt. Giggy's own status page at https://giggy.ai/status lists one component, Text to speech, operational on 4 November 2026 with 98.61 per cent observed availability and 99.85 per cent completion over 14 days, refreshed every 30 minutes. It has no speech-to-text component and no incident log, so it shows nothing about this surface (5 of 20). No readable incident history, so the floor (5). Rate limits are published per credential, 60 Batch generation POSTs, 120 event-stream GETs, 600 reads and 120 MCP requests a minute, with eight live contexts per controller; Fast and Streaming POSTs have no per-credential limit and Batch queue capacity isn't given (15). 429 carries `Retry-After` with `RateLimit-*` headers, and the docs give a safe-retry rule for uploads, read the generation by UUID after a timeout or 504 and never upload the same recording again. REST transcription has no idempotency key, but the MCP `transcribe_audio` tool takes one (15). No SLA on the pricing page or in the docs; the terms could not be read (0). No beta or preview label on the API, the SDKs or the MCP server (10). 5+5+15+15+0+10 = 50.
- Soniox Speech-to-Text (77): Instatus page at status.soniox.com with per-region components and a paged history (20). Minor incidents only since 6 August, with 70 minutes of failed API key creation in the console on 24 August, failed new WebSocket connections to stt-rt.eu.soniox.com between 12:50 and 13:03 UTC on 25 August (existing connections unaffected), and 45 minutes of real-time overload in the Japan region on 8 September ("some customers", partial). October and November have no notices (20). Limits published with numbers, 100 requests a minute, 10 concurrent streams, a connection limit derived from them and a fixed 300-minute stream cap (15). The errors reference documents `limit_exceeded` as HTTP 429 on REST and the STT WebSocket with what to do for each limit, "retry with exponential backoff" for 503 `service_unavailable`, and resubmitting failed async jobs, which aren't auto-retried. No idempotency key, so safe-retry guidance without one (12), as soniox-tts. No SLA found (0). `stt-rt-v6` and `stt-async-v6` are active and the v5 models deprecated, with no preview label (10). 20+20+15+12+0+10 = 77.

### Schema & documentation: Soniox Speech-to-Text +17

- Giggy Speech to Text (68): Model reading, with the API reference. The docs and llms.txt link an OpenAPI 3.1 file at https://api.giggy.ai/v1/openapi.json, but api.giggy.ai's robots.txt could not be read, so the file wasn't fetched. We credit only what the reference pages show of it, typed `mode` values, the privacy booleans and a typed error body, and there is no AsyncAPI file for the live socket (12 of 25). llms.txt and llms-full.txt (10). The docs say when to use each mode and transport, that MCP is not a live transport, that an OpenAI base-URL swap does not work for STT, and which options have no equivalent, more than most listings say about when not to use something (17 of 20). `mode` is an enum of three values and the input format is fixed, but `language` is a free code or name with no published list, and the MCP input schemas were read only from the repository's docs, not from the server (11 of 15). Examples in the SDK READMEs, the examples repository and a Postman collection, and an error table of ten statuses with `type`, `code`, `message`, `status`, `request_id` and `param` fields, though only one code value is named (11 of 15). Paths are under `/v1` and the SDK and Pipecat repositories keep CHANGELOG.md files, dated in two of them, but there is no service changelog (7 of 15). 12+10+17+11+11+7 = 68.
- Soniox Speech-to-Text (85): docs.soniox.com/openapi.yaml, OpenAPI 3.1.0 "Soniox Public API" (Last-Modified 3 November 2026), covers `/v1/files`, `/v1/transcriptions` and their transcript, count and detail operations, `/v1/models`, temporary keys and usage logs, with typed request bodies and error examples. No AsyncAPI file for the WebSocket (25). llms.txt with Markdown pages (10). Guides state purpose and say when to use the real-time or async API (15). Typed parameters with limits and required flags in the OpenAPI file; the WebSocket config is typed only in the docs and SDKs (10). Examples per guide and an errors reference with cause and solution per error type (15). Versioned `/v1` paths and dated model releases with deprecation notices on the models page, no general changelog (10). 25+10+15+10+15+10 = 85.

### Payments & pricing: Giggy Speech to Text +10

- Giggy Speech to Text (30): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-hour prices for Batch, Fast and Streaming and every credit pack published without a login (20). Free Batch transcription and Personal free credits topped up to 10,000 a month, but no page read says whether a card is needed, so half, as other listings read an unstated card requirement (10 of 20). A person signs up in a browser and creates the key there; no programmatic key route was found (0). 0+20+10+0 = 30.
- Soniox Speech-to-Text (20): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Token prices published without a login, with Soniox's own per-hour estimates (20). No free credits for new sign-ups since 2025-10-27 (0). A person signs up in a browser (0).

### Maintenance & community: Soniox Speech-to-Text +6

- Giggy Speech to Text (69): Read as a model, on the lines deepgram-stt and cartesia-ink-stt use (recency 30, dated releases 10, deprecation notice 10, support 15, issues 10, SDKs 15, health 10). The Python and Node SDKs released 0.2.1 and the Pipecat adapter 0.3.3 on 1 November 2026, and the examples and MCP repositories changed on 3 November (30). Since 7 October the Node SDK has four tagged releases, the Python SDK six and the Pipecat adapter six, the STT ones from 12 October (10). No deprecation policy or dated notice. The legacy `https://giggy.ai/v1` origin and older SDK transports are kept 'for existing integrations' with no end date (2 of 10). No service changelog; the support and contact pages drew by script, and GitHub issues is the support URL in the plugin manifest (5 of 15). GitHub issues and reply times could not be read, since the GitHub API was not available to this session (0 of 10). Official SDKs current, `giggy` and `@giggy-ai/sdk` at 0.2.1 on PyPI and npm (15). CI workflows in five repositories and publish workflows, the n8n node through npm OIDC with provenance, and two runtime dependencies in each SDK; run results not seen (7 of 10). 30+10+2+5+0+15+7 = 69.
- Soniox Speech-to-Text (75): Read on the model lines the other Soniox listings use (recency 30, dated releases 10, notice 10, support 15, issues 10, SDKs 15, health 10), where the 1 October note used the tool lines. `stt-rt-v6` and `stt-async-v6` released on 3 November 2026, with Python SDK 2.11.0 (agent text input on `RealtimeSTTConfig`) and soniox-js v2026.11.03 ("Feat/v6 support") the same day (30). Since 6 August, the releases that touch STT code are Python 2.9.0 (11 August, async STT and files), 2.10.0 (2 October, realtime STT authentication), 2.11.0, soniox-js v2026.10.12 (12 October, realtime STT authentication) and v2026.11.03, plus the v6 model entry (10). For notice, the v5 models are removed on 15 December 2026, 42 days after the notice, with requests routed to v6, and WebSocket `api_key` authentication ends on 15 January 2027 with a migration guide; v4 had 14 days (5). A community and support page, with no reply times read (5). SDK issues unread, github.com 403 (3). Current Python and Node SDKs (15). soniox-js runs CI (`.github/workflows/ci.yml`), the Python repository has tests and uv.lock but no CI workflow (7). 30+10+5+5+3+15+7 = 75.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Giggy Speech to Text | Soniox Speech-to-Text | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 77 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +27 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 68 | 85 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +17 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 68 | 70 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 57 | 87 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +30 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 20 | Giggy Speech to Text +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 75 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 30 | 76 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +46 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **54.5 · C** | **68.5 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Giggy Speech to Text | Soniox Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Giggy | Soniox |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.giggy.ai/v1` | `https://api.soniox.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP, SSE (legacy), websocket, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for speech-to-text | not published | $0.0017 per minute of audio |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service. The terms page draws its text by script and was not read. The Python and Node SDKs, the Pipecat adapter and the MCP repository are ISC (Copyright 2026 Giggy), the n8n node MIT | Apache-2.0 (Python SDK) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.GRQDigitalCapital/giggy-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | 2026-06-29 |
| Privacy policy last updated | not read yet | 2026-06-29 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 12 stars, 22k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## What the same task costs

| Task | Giggy Speech to Text | Soniox Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Transcribe a one-hour meeting | $0.04 to $0.09 | $0.10 to $0.12 |

## How the scores have moved

### Giggy Speech to Text

No score change since it was listed.

### Soniox Speech-to-Text

- +10.3 on 4 November 2026 (C to B): product, new evidence, negative event
- -0.1 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**Giggy Speech to Text.** Fast transcription costs $0.04 an input audio hour and Batch is free up to 25 minutes, with published rate limits, Retry-After and a rule to check a generation before resubmitting. Input must be 16 kHz mono WAV, there are no timestamps or speaker labels, the status page covers text-to-speech only, and no company is named on pages we could read.

**Soniox Speech-to-Text.** About $0.10 an hour async and $0.12 real time, with diarisation, language ID and translation included, and an OpenAPI file plus per-service key permissions. The v6 models arrived on 3 November 2026 and v5 is removed on 15 December. No free credits for new accounts since October 2025, and a 2.x Python SDK minor removed public interfaces.

## Before you call either

### Giggy Speech to Text

1. Pass `mode=batch` explicitly for free transcription. Raw REST and MCP default to paid Fast when `mode` is omitted.
2. Convert audio to PCM16 mono 16 kHz WAV first and send it as the raw body with `Content-Type: audio/wav`.
3. Keep the `generation_uuid` from the 202 and poll `GET /v1/generations/{uuid}`. Never re-upload after a timeout or 504 before reading that generation.
4. Fetch the transcript from the signed `generation.result.url` after completion, without the API key. It can disappear after retention cleanup.
5. On the live WebSocket, replace earlier text with each cumulative `transcription` event and publish final text only after `input_complete`.

### Soniox Speech-to-Text

1. Pass `audio_url` for public files and skip the upload step. Delete uploaded files or they count against the 10 GB quota for 30 days
2. Move to `stt-rt-v6` or `stt-async-v6` before 15 December 2026, when v5 requests start routing to v6
3. Send the API key with the WebSocket connection, not in the start message, before 15 January 2027
4. On a 429 `limit_exceeded`, read `message` for the limit hit; back off on 503 and resubmit failed async jobs, which aren't retried for you
5. Split anything over 300 minutes. The cap is fixed

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Giggy Speech to Text or Soniox Speech-to-Text?

Soniox Speech-to-Text scores 68.5 (B) on agent readiness against Giggy Speech to Text's 54.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Giggy Speech to Text leads on payments & pricing.

### Do Giggy Speech to Text and Soniox Speech-to-Text need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Giggy Speech to Text and Soniox Speech-to-Text without installing anything?

Yes. Giggy Speech to Text has a hosted endpoint at https://api.giggy.ai/v1 and Soniox Speech-to-Text at https://api.soniox.com/v1.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-soniox-stt.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-soniox-stt.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "giggy-stt", "b": "soniox-stt"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare giggy-stt soniox-stt`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/giggy-stt.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/soniox-stt.json

## Other comparisons with Giggy Speech to Text or Soniox Speech-to-Text

- [Amazon Transcribe vs Giggy Speech to Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-transcribe-vs-giggy-stt.md)
- [Amazon Transcribe vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-transcribe-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Giggy Speech to Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/assemblyai-stt-vs-giggy-stt.md)
- [AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/assemblyai-stt-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [Azure AI Speech speech-to-text vs Giggy Speech to Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-speech-to-text-vs-giggy-stt.md)
- [Azure AI Speech speech-to-text vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-speech-to-text-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [Cartesia Ink vs Giggy Speech to Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-giggy-stt.md)
- [Cartesia Ink vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Giggy Speech to Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepgram-stt-vs-giggy-stt.md)
- [Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepgram-stt-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API vs Giggy Speech to Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/elevenlabs-scribe-vs-giggy-stt.md)
- [ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/elevenlabs-scribe-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [Giggy Speech to Text vs Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-gladia-stt.md)
- [Giggy Speech to Text vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-google-speech-to-text.md)
- [Giggy Speech to Text vs Groq Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-groq-speech-to-text.md)
- [Giggy Speech to Text vs Mistral Voxtral Transcribe](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-mistral-voxtral-transcribe.md)
- [Giggy Speech to Text vs OpenAI Speech to Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-openai-speech-to-text.md)
- [Giggy Speech to Text vs Rev AI Speech-to-Text API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-rev-ai-stt.md)
- [Giggy Speech to Text vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/giggy-stt-vs-speechmatics-stt.md)
- [Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gladia-stt-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [Google Cloud Speech-to-Text vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-speech-to-text-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [Groq Speech-to-Text vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/groq-speech-to-text-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [Mistral Voxtral Transcribe vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mistral-voxtral-transcribe-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [OpenAI Speech to Text vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openai-speech-to-text-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [Rev AI Speech-to-Text API vs Soniox Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/rev-ai-stt-vs-soniox-stt.md)
- [Soniox Speech-to-Text vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/soniox-stt-vs-speechmatics-stt.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp