Head to head · Speech-to-text · October 2026 research run

MiniMax Speech-to-Text vs Soniox Speech-to-Text

Soniox Speech-to-Text scores 68.5 (B) on agent readiness against MiniMax Speech-to-Text's 48.4 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do speech-to-text.

Best speech-to-text APIs for AI agents · All 320 stt comparisons

Which one, for what

MiniMax Speech-to-Text D

Best for Cheap file transcription with diarisation and subtitles, strongest on Chinese and code-switched audio by the vendor's account.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Soniox Speech-to-Text loses 3 points for them

Watch for

Files only, up to 500 seconds and 50 MB; live audio input isn't supported

Soniox Speech-to-Text B

Best for Price-led multilingual transcription and translation, live or async, and for operators who want no training and no retention.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 77 against 47
  • Security & auth, 87 against 33
  • Maintenance & community, 75 against 6
  • Transparency & trust, 76 against 63

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

No free credits for new accounts since October 2025

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Maintenance & community Soniox Speech-to-Text +69

MiniMax Speech-to-Text 6

Read as a model. No dated release or change of asr-1.0 was found on the model or API release notes or the status page (0). No dated ASR entries in the last 90 days (0). Support by email and Discord, not tested (6 of 15). No official SDK, and the MCP servers have no transcription tool (0 of 15). No package to judge (0 of 10). Total 6.

Soniox Speech-to-Text 75

Read on the model lines the other Soniox listings use (recency 30, dated releases 10, notice 10, support 15, issues 10, SDKs 15, health 10), where the 1 October note used the tool lines. stt-rt-v6 and stt-async-v6 released on 3 November 2026, with Python SDK 2.11.0 (agent text input on RealtimeSTTConfig) and soniox-js v2026.11.03 ("Feat/v6 support") the same day (30). Since 6 August, the releases that touch STT code are Python 2.9.0 (11 August, async STT and files), 2.10.0 (2 October, realtime STT authentication), 2.11.0, soniox-js v2026.10.12 (12 October, realtime STT authentication) and v2026.11.03, plus the v6 model entry (10). For notice, the v5 models are removed on 15 December 2026, 42 days after the notice, with requests routed to v6, and WebSocket api_key authentication ends on 15 January 2027 with a migration guide; v4 had 14 days (5). A community and support page, with no reply times read (5). SDK issues unread, github.com 403 (3). Current Python and Node SDKs (15). soniox-js runs CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml), the Python repository has tests and uv.lock but no CI workflow (7). 30+10+5+5+3+15+7 = 75.

Security & auth Soniox Speech-to-Text +54

MiniMax Speech-to-Text 33

Model reading of the checklist, with training and retention in place of the least-privilege and injection lines. Plain API keys from the console with no scopes found, and the docs say publicly leaked keys may be disabled, as on minimax-voice-cloning (20 of 30). The terms (effective 30 March 2026), as read for minimax-voice-cloning on 4 November, let MiniMax use input and generated content to operate, maintain, develop and improve its services, with no opt-out found, and the privacy policy rules out only training to profile or target consumers (5 of 20). No retention period for uploaded audio or transcripts was found (3 of 15). Each response carries a trace ID, with no audit log found (5 of 15). No security.txt, disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification found, as on the other MiniMax listings (0 of 20). Total 33.

Soniox Speech-to-Text 87

Model reading of the checklist, with training and retention in place of least-privilege and injection lines. "Every API key in a project has a list of permissions": real-time STT, async STT and Files with Read and Write levels, model listing, usage and temporary keys, with permission_denied for anything else, and temporary keys that are restricted and expire. Keys go in the WebSocket handshake rather than the URL (30). Customer audio and transcripts are never used for training, per the 1 October check (20). Audio and transcripts aren't retained by default, and async files and transcripts auto-delete after 30 days or on a delete call, per the 1 October check (15). Per-request usage logs with request IDs, duration, tokens and cost (10). SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001:2022, and the Python SDK's SECURITY.md gives a disclosure route with no acknowledgement time, as soniox-tts. No security.txt (404) and no bug bounty (12). 30+20+15+10+12 = 87.

Reliability Soniox Speech-to-Text +30

MiniMax Speech-to-Text 47

Atlassian Statuspage at status.minimax.io with component history, but its components are LLM, Text-to-Speech and Video Generation, with none for speech to text (10 of 20). With no component, the history holds no record for transcription (5). Limits published with numbers, 2 concurrent connections and 30,000 audio seconds a minute (15). 429 is documented as rate_limit_error, and the general error code page says to retry later, with no backoff figures or Retry-After (7 of 15). No SLA in the terms or docs (0). asr-1.0 is called the current public model with no beta label (10). 10 + 5 + 15 + 7 + 0 + 10 = 47.

Soniox Speech-to-Text 77

Instatus page at status.soniox.com with per-region components and a paged history (20). Minor incidents only since 6 August, with 70 minutes of failed API key creation in the console on 24 August, failed new WebSocket connections to stt-rt.eu.soniox.com between 12:50 and 13:03 UTC on 25 August (existing connections unaffected), and 45 minutes of real-time overload in the Japan region on 8 September ("some customers", partial). October and November have no notices (20). Limits published with numbers, 100 requests a minute, 10 concurrent streams, a connection limit derived from them and a fixed 300-minute stream cap (15). The errors reference documents limit_exceeded as HTTP 429 on REST and the STT WebSocket with what to do for each limit, "retry with exponential backoff" for 503 service_unavailable, and resubmitting failed async jobs, which aren't auto-retried. No idempotency key, so safe-retry guidance without one (12), as soniox-tts. No SLA found (0). stt-rt-v6 and stt-async-v6 are active and the v5 models deprecated, with no preview label (10). 20+20+15+12+0+10 = 77.

Transparency & trust Soniox Speech-to-Text +13

MiniMax Speech-to-Text 63

Closed API with clear terms under Singapore law naming Nanonoble Pte. Ltd., as on the other MiniMax listings (15 of 30). The terms and privacy policy agree that inputs may be used to improve services and that data sits in a United States data centre, with no retention period for audio (8 of 30). No deprecation notice or policy touches the ASR API (10 of 20, for the dated notices elsewhere on the API release notes). Data location stated as the United States and an EU representative named, with third parties only by category (10 of 20). Total 43.

Soniox Speech-to-Text 76

Closed service with clear terms, last updated 2026-06-29, and an Apache-2.0 Python SDK (15). The security page, limits page and pricing page agree on no training, no default retention and 30-day async deletion (25). Model retirements are dated and old names route to the new model (v5 to v6 on 15 December 2026), though the October 2025 retirement of the preview models was described as accelerated (15). A data residency page names region-specific domains for the US, EU, Japan and India, and no sub-processor list was found (15).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMiniMax Speech-to-TextSoniox Speech-to-TextEdge
Reliability16%204777Soniox Speech-to-Text +30
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28285Soniox Speech-to-Text +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.27070even
Security & auth14%17.53387Soniox Speech-to-Text +54
Payments & pricing10%12.52020even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8675Soniox Speech-to-Text +69
Transparency & trust7%8.86376Soniox Speech-to-Text +13
Negative events≤150-3
TotalD 48.4/100B 68.5/100

Facts side by side

FactMiniMax Speech-to-TextSoniox Speech-to-Text
KindModel APIModel API
VendorMiniMaxSoniox
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.soniox.com/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPay per usePay per use
Price for speech-to-textnot published$0.0017 per minute of audio
x402nono
LicencenoneApache-2.0 (Python SDK)
Tools exposed0none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last releasenone2026-11-03
Terms last updatedcouldn't be read2026-06-29
Privacy policy last updatedcouldn't be read2026-06-29
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be readnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be readnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be readyes
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be readyes
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be readnot found in the text
Popularitynone12 stars, 22k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (2)

What the same task costs

TaskMiniMax Speech-to-TextSoniox Speech-to-Text
Transcribe a one-hour meeting60 minutes of recorded audio$0.38$0.10 to $0.12

Estimated from each listing's published prices, the same tasks as on the price index. Plans, minimums and free allowances aren't counted.

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

MiniMax Speech-to-Text

MiniMax's ASR API has an OpenAPI file, typed error envelopes and a public price of $0.38 an hour, with diarisation and subtitle output. It takes files of up to 500 seconds only, allows 2 concurrent connections, has no free tier or status component, and no dated release.

Soniox Speech-to-Text

About $0.10 an hour async and $0.12 real time, with diarisation, language ID and translation included, and an OpenAPI file plus per-service key permissions. The v6 models arrived on 3 November 2026 and v5 is removed on 15 December. No free credits for new accounts since October 2025, and a 2.x Python SDK minor removed public interfaces.

Before you call either

MiniMax Speech-to-Text

  1. Split recordings into pieces under 500 seconds before uploading, since longer audio returns 400
  2. Convert to mono 16 kHz or a compressed format to stay under 50 MB
  3. Use verbose_json for speakers and timestamps, and json only when streaming
  4. Treat 402 insufficient_balance_error as final and ask the user to top up
  5. Use https://api.minimaxi.com for a mainland China account

Soniox Speech-to-Text

  1. Pass audio_url for public files and skip the upload step. Delete uploaded files or they count against the 10 GB quota for 30 days
  2. Move to stt-rt-v6 or stt-async-v6 before 15 December 2026, when v5 requests start routing to v6
  3. Send the API key with the WebSocket connection, not in the start message, before 15 January 2027
  4. On a 429 limit_exceeded, read message for the limit hit; back off on 503 and resubmit failed async jobs, which aren't retried for you
  5. Split anything over 300 minutes. The cap is fixed

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, MiniMax Speech-to-Text or Soniox Speech-to-Text?

Soniox Speech-to-Text scores 68.5 (B) on agent readiness against MiniMax Speech-to-Text's 48.4 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Do MiniMax Speech-to-Text and Soniox Speech-to-Text need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call MiniMax Speech-to-Text and Soniox Speech-to-Text without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for MiniMax Speech-to-Text. Soniox Speech-to-Text has a hosted endpoint at https://api.soniox.com/v1.

Other comparisons with MiniMax Speech-to-Text or Soniox Speech-to-Text

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