# Groq Speech-to-Text vs Inworld STT (slim)

> Groq Speech-to-Text scores 70.1 (BB) to Inworld STT's 54.7 (C) for speech-to-text. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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Groq Speech-to-Text scores 70.1 (BB) on agent readiness against Inworld STT's 54.7 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do speech-to-text.

- Groq Speech-to-Text: BB 70.1, rank #211 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/groq-speech-to-text.min.md
- Inworld STT: C 54.7, rank #895 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/inworld-stt.min.md
- Groq Speech-to-Text, 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; Agent ergonomics, 75 against 56; Security & auth, 79 against 63; Maintenance & community, 48 against 41; Transparency & trust, 85 against 60. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.
- Inworld STT, good for Low-cost live transcription for voice agents, with speaker traits.

| Category | Groq Speech-to-Text | Inworld STT |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 90 | 60 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 58 | 54 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 75 | 56 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 79 | 63 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 48 | 41 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 85 | 60 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Groq Speech-to-Text | Inworld STT |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Groq | Inworld AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.groq.com/openai/v1` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, websocket |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for speech-to-text | not published | $0.0017 per minute of audio |
| Licence | 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 | none |
| Tools exposed | none | 0 |
| Last release | 2026-08-26 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-06-22 | 2025-06-11 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-11-12 | 2026-01-18 |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 621 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Groq Speech-to-Text +30: Groq Speech-to-Text 90 (Hosted reading. The status page at groqstatus.com (incident.io) lists `whisper-large-v3` and `whisper-large-v3-turbo` as separate production components (20). On 1 November 2026 it showed both at 100% uptime from 3 August to 1 November with "No incidents", and neither its RSS feed nor the incident pages it links names either model. The window's three incidents were on other components (an enterprise preview model on 10 and 12 October, and console errors on 12 October that Groq said did not affect inference), plus maintenance on 9 and 18 October (30). The rate limits page gives numbers for both models, 20 requests a minute, 2,000 a day, 7,200 audio seconds an hour and 28,800 a day on the free plan, re-read on 1 November, and the models page gives 300 requests a minute and 200,000 audio seconds an hour (v3) and 400 and 400,000 (Turbo) on the Developer plan (15). A 429 carries `retry-after`, the security onboarding page says to back off exponentially on 429 and 5xx, and transcription is a stateless call (15). The enterprise Performance Tier's 99.9% availability SLA names three language models and neither Whisper model, per the 8 October check, so no SLA was found for this product (0). Both models are listed as production models (10). 20+30+15+15+0+10 = 90.); Inworld STT 60 (Hosted reading of the checklist. status.inworld.ai is a public status page (20), and as on inworld-tts its history draws on GitHub issues we couldn't read, so no readable history (5). Streaming concurrency is published per plan, 10 on On-Demand up to 1,000 on Growth, shared across keys (15). 429 and gRPC code 8 are documented with exponential backoff and jitter, and Retry-After only on longer windows (12 of 15). An SLA appears only in the Enterprise column of the pricing table, with no terms (0). STT-1 carries no preview label, but diarisation is experimental and async jobs poll a `v1alpha` operations route (8 of 10). 20 + 5 + 15 + 12 + 0 + 8 = 60.)
- Transparency & trust, Groq Speech-to-Text +25: Groq Speech-to-Text 85 (The hosted service is closed under the Groq Services Agreement. Both models are OpenAI's published Whisper weights, linked from each model card, served with Groq's own quantisation, and the SDKs are Apache-2.0 (20 of 30). The data page, the services agreement and the DPA agree on retention and on the training ban. The agreement limits zero retention to 'Eligible Customers' while the data page says all customers may enable it, and the privacy policy effective 12 November 2025 says it does not cover customer data sent to GroqCloud (26 of 30). A deprecations page with dated history and replacements, with no minimum notice period (14 of 20). Customer data is kept in Google Cloud storage in the United States, and the DPA gives 15 days' notice of sub-processor changes to subscribers. The sub-processor list is in the trust centre we could not read (12 of 20).); Inworld STT 60 (Closed service with clear terms naming Theai, Inc. dba Inworld AI (15). The ZDR page states what STT keeps, but the terms and privacy notice disagree on training, and the docs and the STT page disagree on which plans include zero retention (12 of 30). No dated STT deprecation or change notices are public (8 of 20). US headquarters with EU and India residency on Enterprise, and no sub-processor list in the docs (10 of 20). Total 45.)
- Agent ergonomics, Groq Speech-to-Text +19: Groq Speech-to-Text 75 (API reading, as for the other speech-to-text listings. The default response is the text alone, `text` returns a bare string, and segments and word timestamps come only with `verbose_json`. `srt` and `vtt` are listed as unsupported (18 of 25). There is no transcript store to page through. Volume goes through the Batch API by `url`, and a file over 25 MB (free) or 100 MB (Developer) has to be chunked by the caller (12 of 20). The errors page gives 13 status codes with a recovery line each and an error object of `message` and `type`, with no machine-readable code field (15 of 20). The call is stateless and safe to retry, and the SDKs retry connection errors, 408, 409, 429 and 5xx by default. No idempotency key exists or is needed (15 of 20). `model` and one of `file` or `url` are the only required fields, with official Python and TypeScript SDKs and OpenAI SDK compatibility (15).); Inworld STT 56 (API reading of the checklist. Voice Profile, word timestamps and diarisation are opt-in, and responses carry a `usage` block (18 of 25). No lists to page. Async jobs return an operation to poll (8 of 20). Errors carry a numeric gRPC code and message on both endpoints, but a malformed first message closes the socket with 1005 and no frame (12 of 20). Sync calls are stateless and async calls return an operation, with no idempotency key, and empty transcripts and add-ons are billed (10 of 20). A call needs a model, an encoding and the audio. No STT SDK was found, only the CLI and its MCP server and REST examples (8 of 15). Total 56.)
- Security & auth, Groq Speech-to-Text +16: Groq Speech-to-Text 79 (Model reading, scored like the GroqCloud listing. Bearer keys belong to one project, each project has its own rate limits per model, and the security onboarding page covers rotation and immediate revocation. No way to limit a key to the audio endpoints was found (26 of 30). The services agreement, last modified 22 June 2026, says Groq may not use inputs or outputs for training or fine-tuning unless the customer grants permission (20). Inputs and outputs are not retained by default, logs kept for reliability or abuse last up to 30 days, and the data page lists both audio endpoints as eligible for zero data retention, a setting in Data Controls (15). Usage data and request logs per project and a read-only Reader role. No audit log of administrative actions was found (10 of 15). security.txt on groq.com holds a Contact line only, with no expiry date. The DPA commits to SOC 2 Type II audits, and the trust centre at trust.groq.com is drawn by script and was not read (8 of 20).); Inworld STT 63 (Model reading of the checklist, with training and retention in place of the least-privilege and injection lines. Workspace API keys sent as Basic credentials, deleted to revoke, with separate keys per environment advised. The CLI mints read-only keys unless `--write` is given, but write toggles cover only the Voice and Router APIs, so no key is limited to one product. Browsers use short-lived tokens minted server side, via the `bearer_` WebSocket subprotocol, not the URL (25 of 30). The Terms (11 June 2025) say Inworld won't train generally available models on customers' non-public Materials, except feedback and flagged content, while the Privacy Notice (18 January 2026) lists training AI models among its uses, per the inworld-tts check of 4 November (12 of 20). Zero data retention keeps STT audio and transcripts in memory and out of logs, included on Developer ($300 a month) and above per the docs, while the STT page says Enterprise or a Growth add-on. Async results and audio go after 7 days, and no default period is given for logs (8 of 15). Usage is attributed per key and a Performance page shows errors and throttling (8 of 15). SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA claimed and a vulnerability report form, with no security.txt or bug bounty, per the 4 November reading (10 of 20). Total 63.)
- Maintenance & community, Groq Speech-to-Text +7: Groq Speech-to-Text 48 (Model reading, as for the GroqCloud listing, counting changes to this listing's own models and endpoints, as the OpenAI listings read their own models and the AWS listings their own service models. No dated change to speech-to-text was found in 2026. The Python SDK 1.7.0 (tag 25 August, uploaded to PyPI on 26 August 2026 per the 8 October check) and TypeScript SDK 1.6.0 (25 August) add chat reasoning guidance, CI workflows and lock-file updates and leave the audio code untouched. The last SDK change to the transcription code was Python 1.2.0 on 18 April 2026. A release that doesn't change this service can't set the recency line in this run, as for the Azure Translator listing, and Muse Spark Open's 15 October preview is a chat model, counted on the GroqCloud listing. So no change within 180 days was found (0, was 20). The deprecations page promises an email and a named replacement and states no minimum notice. The one speech-to-text retirement on it is `distil-whisper-large-v3-en` on 23 August 2025, and the newest announcement is 24 August 2026, for Compound (4 of 12). Neither Whisper model was retired or renamed in the last 90 days (8 of 8). A dated docs changelog with a feed exists, its newest entry is 18 April and none of its entries concern speech-to-text (8 of 15). SDK issue replies not sampled (5 of 10). Official `groq` 1.7.0 on PyPI and `groq-sdk` 1.6.0 on npm, per the tags (15). CI, release automation and lock-file vulnerability fixes in 1.7.0 (8 of 10). 0+4+8+8+5+15+8 = 48.); Inworld STT 41 (Read as a model. No public STT changelog. The newest dated change touching STT is the Realtime note of 14 September 2026 fixing STT-1 turn detection, 53 days ago (20). The CLI, which carries the STT command and MCP tool, shipped 1.4.0 to 1.5.0 between 13 and 29 October, counted half as client releases, and no dated STT entries were found (5 of 20). Discord and support@inworld.ai, with no evidence of answers read (6 of 15). No official STT SDK; the CLI is current (5 of 15). CLI on npm under MIT, current, CI not read (5 of 10). Total 41.)

| Task | Groq Speech-to-Text | Inworld STT |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Transcribe a one-hour meeting | $0.04 to $0.11 | $0.10 to $0.15 |