# 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. Category scores…

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- Updated: 2026-10-09

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 + MCP: grade B, 69.5/100, rank #171 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gladia-stt.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gladia-stt.json
- Groq Speech-to-Text: grade BB, 71.8/100, rank #113 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/groq-speech-to-text.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/groq-speech-to-text.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP | Groq Speech-to-Text | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 90 | Groq Speech-to-Text +30 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 95 | 58 | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +37 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 75 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 70 | 79 | Groq Speech-to-Text +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 40 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 68 | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP +12 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 85 | Groq Speech-to-Text +21 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **69.5 · B** | **71.8 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP | Groq Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Gladia | Groq |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.gladia.io/v2` | `https://api.groq.com/openai/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (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 exposed | 8 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-24 | 2026-08-26 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-06-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2025-11-12 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 4 stars, 4.8k npm/wk, 126k PyPI/wk | 621 stars |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (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.


## For agents

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

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