Head to head · Speech stt · October 2026 research run
Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text has a score of 70.4 (BB) against Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP's 69.7 (B). Both do speech stt. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 55 points.
Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCPGladia · Model API
B69.7/100#108 of 452
Google Cloud Speech-to-TextGoogle Cloud · Model API
BB70.4/100#98 of 452
Which one, for what
Pick Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP for
- schema & documentation (+15)
- agent ergonomics (+5)
- payments & pricing (+20)
- maintenance & community (+55)
Pick Google Cloud Speech-to-Text for
- reliability (+25)
- security & auth (+25)
- transparency & trust (+22)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 60 | 85 | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text +25 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 95 | 80 | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +15 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 75 | 70 | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +5 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 70 | 95 | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text +25 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 20 | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 80 | 25 | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +55 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 66 | 88 | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text +22 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 69.7 · B | 70.4 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Gladia | Google Cloud |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.gladia.io/v2 | https://speech.googleapis.com/v2 |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (SDKs and MCP server) | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) |
| Tools exposed | 8 | 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 | 2026-09-24 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 4 stars, 4.8k npm/wk, 126k PyPI/wk | 713k npm/wk, 3.7M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |
Verdicts
Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP
The solaria-1 model supports live and asynchronous transcription in over 100 languages with code switching. Starter pricing is $0.61 an hour for asynchronous transcription and $0.75 for real-time audio.
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
Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP
- Don't resubmit a pre-recorded job after a 200 or a
transcription.createdwebhook. It's already queued - Pick
solaria-3only for async EN, FR, DE, ES or IT audio. Anything live or multilingual needssolaria-1 - A 429 means the concurrency limit, 3 async and 1 live on the free plan. Wait for a running job to finish
- Upgrade off the free plan before sending sensitive audio
- Split files over 135 minutes or 1,000 MB
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text
- Call Chirp 3 on the
usoreuendpoint. It isn't listed for thegloballocation - Reopen streams before the 5-minute limit, or use
BatchRecognizefor recordings - Downmix stereo unless you need channel labels, since each channel is billed
- Set dynamic batch on offline jobs to cut the price from $0.016 to $0.003 a minute
- Back off on
RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED. The Speech docs don't give a retry interval
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