Head to head · Speech stt · October 2026 research run
Groq Speech-to-Text vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
Groq Speech-to-Text scores 71.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Speechmatics Speech-to-Text's 67.1 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Speechmatics Speech-to-Text leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and maintenance & community. Both do speech stt.
Which one, for what
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 70
- Security & auth, 79 against 65
- Transparency & trust, 85 against 75
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
Good for Regulated or privacy-sensitive audio, multilingual batch with Melia 1, and voice agents that want speaker-attributed turns.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 65 against 58
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 75
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 68
Watch for
Enhanced costs $0.40 to $0.43 an hour, above most rivals
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Groq Speech-to-Text | Speechmatics Speech-to-Text | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 90 | 70 | Groq Speech-to-Text +20 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 58 | 65 | Speechmatics Speech-to-Text +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 75 | 80 | Speechmatics Speech-to-Text +5 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 79 | 65 | Groq Speech-to-Text +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 40 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 68 | 75 | Speechmatics Speech-to-Text +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 85 | 75 | Groq Speech-to-Text +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 71.8 · BB | 67.1 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Groq Speech-to-Text | Speechmatics Speech-to-Text |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Groq | Speechmatics |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.groq.com/openai/v1 | https://eu1.asr.api.speechmatics.com/v2 |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for speech stt | not published | $0.0027 per minute of audio |
| x402 | no | no |
| 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 | MIT (SDKs) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-08-26 | 2026-09-22 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-06-22 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-11-12 | 2026-05-27 |
| 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 | yes | 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 | 621 stars | 20 stars, 58k npm/wk, 48k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |
Verdicts
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.
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.
Before you call either
Groq Speech-to-Text
- Send
whisper-large-v3-turbofor transcription andwhisper-large-v3for translation to English. The translations endpoint does not accept Turbo. - Pass
urlinstead offilefor audio over 25 MB, and split anything over the plan's size limit into overlapping chunks before sending. - Set
response_formattoverbose_jsonbefore asking fortimestamp_granularities[]. Word timestamps add latency, segment timestamps do not. - Every request is billed as at least 10 seconds of audio, so join very short clips where the task allows.
- Read
retry-afteron a 429 and back off. Audio limits count seconds an hour and a day as well as requests.
Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- Set
"model": "enhanced"explicitly. The default isstandard - Use notifications instead of polling. Polling waits 5 seconds by default since the 23 September 2026 change, and
wait=0turns that off - Fetch batch transcripts within 7 days. After that the API returns 404
expired - Pass a
fetch_dataURL for files over 1 GB - Use
/v2/agentwithlinden-1for live agents instead of the plain realtime path
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Groq Speech-to-Text or Speechmatics Speech-to-Text?
Groq Speech-to-Text scores 71.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Speechmatics Speech-to-Text's 67.1 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Speechmatics Speech-to-Text leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and maintenance & community.
Do Groq Speech-to-Text and Speechmatics Speech-to-Text need an API key?
Both need an API key.
Can an agent call Groq Speech-to-Text and Speechmatics Speech-to-Text without installing anything?
Yes. Groq Speech-to-Text has a hosted endpoint at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1 and Speechmatics Speech-to-Text at https://eu1.asr.api.speechmatics.com/v2.
Other comparisons with Groq Speech-to-Text or Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- Amazon Transcribe vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Amazon Transcribe vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text (Universal) vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- Azure AI Speech speech-to-text vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Azure AI Speech speech-to-text vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Deepgram Speech-to-Text (Nova-3, Flux) vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- ElevenLabs Scribe Speech to Text API vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Gladia Speech-to-Text API + MCP vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- Google Cloud Speech-to-Text vs Groq Speech-to-Text
- Google Cloud Speech-to-Text vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- Groq Speech-to-Text vs Mistral Voxtral Transcribe
- Groq Speech-to-Text vs Rev AI Speech-to-Text API
- Groq Speech-to-Text vs Soniox Speech-to-Text
- Mistral Voxtral Transcribe vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- Rev AI Speech-to-Text API vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
- Soniox Speech-to-Text vs Speechmatics Speech-to-Text
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/groq-speech-to-text-vs-speechmatics-stt.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/groq-speech-to-text.json·/api/v1/tools/speechmatics-stt.json - From a terminal
anchor compare groq-speech-to-text speechmatics-stt(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "groq-speech-to-text", "b": "speechmatics-stt"}at/mcp, no key