# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-04

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 + MCP: grade B, 69.7/100, rank #108 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gladia-stt.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gladia-stt.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 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 | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 85 | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text +25 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 95 | 80 | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +15 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 70 | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 70 | 95 | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text +25 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 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 this run) | 80 | 25 | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +55 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 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

1. Don't resubmit a pre-recorded job after a 200 or a `transcription.created` webhook. It's already queued
2. Pick `solaria-3` only for async EN, FR, DE, ES or IT audio. Anything live or multilingual needs `solaria-1`
3. A 429 means the concurrency limit, 3 async and 1 live on the free plan. Wait for a running job to finish
4. Upgrade off the free plan before sending sensitive audio
5. Split files over 135 minutes or 1,000 MB

### 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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