Google Cloud Speech-to-Text vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text

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.

Speechmatics Speech-to-Text

Training is opt-in and real-time audio is not stored. Enhanced transcription costs $0.40 to $0.43 an hour.

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

Speechmatics Speech-to-Text

1. Set "model": "enhanced" explicitly. The default is standard
2. Use notifications instead of polling. Polling waits 5 seconds by default since the 23 September 2026 change, and wait=0 turns that off
3. Fetch batch transcripts within 7 days. After that the API returns 404 expired
4. Pass a fetch_data URL for files over 1 GB
5. Use /v2/agent with linden-1 for live agents instead of the plain realtime path