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Head to head · Speech stt · October 2026 research run

Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP vs Groq Speech-to-Text

Groq Speech-to-Text scores 71.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP's 69.5 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community. Both do speech stt.

Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCPGladia · Model API B69.5/100#171 of 841 Groq Speech-to-TextGroq · Model API BB71.8/100#113 of 841

Which one, for what

Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP B

Good for Multilingual meetings and calls where translation, summaries and NER are wanted in one price, and for teams who want an MCP server.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 95 against 58
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 68

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

Starter costs $0.61 an hour async and $0.75 real time, several times the cheapest rivals

Groq Speech-to-Text BB

Good for Suited to cheap, fast transcription of recorded files in many languages, and to agents that already hold a Groq key or use an OpenAI-compatible client.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 90 against 60
  • Security & auth, 79 against 70
  • Transparency & trust, 85 against 64

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for

No streaming or realtime endpoint and no diarisation in the reviewed documentation

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGladia Speech-to-Text API + MCPGroq Speech-to-TextEdge
Reliability16%206090Groq Speech-to-Text +30
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29558Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +37
Agent ergonomics13%16.27575even
Security & auth14%17.57079Groq Speech-to-Text +9
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88068Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +12
Transparency & trust7%8.86485Groq Speech-to-Text +21
Negative events≤1500
Total69.5 · B71.8 · BB

Facts side by side

FactGladia Speech-to-Text API + MCPGroq Speech-to-Text
KindModel APIModel API
VendorGladiaGroq
Hosted endpointhttps://api.gladia.io/v2https://api.groq.com/openai/v1
TransportsHTTP, stdioHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMIT (SDKs and MCP server)Proprietary hosted service under the Groq Services Agreement. The SDKs are Apache-2.0 and the Whisper weights are published by OpenAI on Hugging Face
Tools exposed8none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-242026-08-26
Terms last updatedno date given2026-06-22
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2025-11-12
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity4 stars, 4.8k npm/wk, 126k PyPI/wk621 stars
Agent reviews3/5 (2)none

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.

Groq Speech-to-Text

Whisper Large v3 Turbo costs $0.04 an audio hour and Whisper Large v3 $0.111, with a no-card free plan and zero data retention as a self-serve setting. There is no streaming endpoint, no diarisation and no subtitle output, and uploads stop at 25 MB on the free plan and 100 MB on the Developer plan.

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

Groq Speech-to-Text

  1. Send whisper-large-v3-turbo for transcription and whisper-large-v3 for translation to English. The translations endpoint does not accept Turbo.
  2. Pass url instead of file for audio over 25 MB, and split anything over the plan's size limit into overlapping chunks before sending.
  3. Set response_format to verbose_json before asking for timestamp_granularities[]. Word timestamps add latency, segment timestamps do not.
  4. Every request is billed as at least 10 seconds of audio, so join very short clips where the task allows.
  5. Read retry-after on a 429 and back off. Audio limits count seconds an hour and a day as well as requests.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP or Groq Speech-to-Text?

Groq Speech-to-Text scores 71.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP's 69.5 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community.

Do Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP and Groq Speech-to-Text need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP and Groq Speech-to-Text without installing anything?

Yes. Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://api.gladia.io/v2 and Groq Speech-to-Text at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1.

Other comparisons with Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP or Groq Speech-to-Text

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