10 Best Whisper AI Alternatives for Speech-to-Text Services in 2024

Today, performing multilingual transcription, speech translation, and language detection are made easy with AI-powered speech recognition tools. This software’s API (Application Programming Interface) provides the ability to call a service to transcribe audio-containing speech into written text.

One of the most well-known choices among speech recognition tools is Whisper AI. The platform converts spoken language into text and is used as a chatbot, voice assistant, speech translator, and transcriptor. It is also known for automating the process of taking notes during meetings.

With so many features, still, this tool may not be an ideal choice for your organization if your project involves real-time processing of streaming voice data or if you need to train a custom model.

The vast number of speech transcription options can be overwhelming and make it difficult to make an informed choice. This article breaks down the best Whisper AI alternatives, outlining their top features, pros and cons, and pricing. So, let’s check out the ranking of all these leading speech-to-text APIs.

10 Best Whisper AI Alternatives in 2024

Here are some of the best Whisper AI Alternatives for you to look at:

Google Speech-to-Text

Google Speech-to-Text is provided as a part of the Google Cloud Platform. It processes over 1 billion voices every month and boasts close to the human level of understanding of numerous languages. It enables developers to translate the audio from text by applying robust neural network models in an easy-to-use API.

Features:

• It integrates well with Google Drive, Google Meet, Google Docs, etc.
• This platform provides multi-channel recognition
• It is powered by machine learning.

Pros	Cons
Real-time streaming support	It supports transcription of files that are in Google Cloud Bucket
Supports more than 125 languages	Overall accuracy is not that good

Pricing:

It offers 0-60 minutes/month for free. The premium plan is for Speech Recognition (without data logging – default):

• Standard Plan- $0.024 / minute
• Medical Plan- $0.078 / minute
• Speech Recognition (with data logging opt-in)- $0.016 / minute.

Link: https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure allows you to translate text swiftly and accurately in over 90 languages. It is one of the most advanced voice-recognition platforms around. The platform uses deep learning algorithms to overcome poor sound quality and adapt to numerous speaking styles to deliver accurate audio transcriptions.

Features:

• Its speaker recognition feature allows to recognize who’s speaking in a meeting
• You can customize translations for the organization’s specific terms in a preferred programming language
• Allows you to deploy your endpoint to use in your application.

Pros	Cons
Integrates with Azure ecosystem	Complicated to set up
Excellent transcription accuracy	Privacy concerns

Pricing:

It offers a free plan. After you use free credits, move to pay as you go to keep using the same services.

Link: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/ai-services/speech-to-text

AssemblyAI

AssemblyAI’s speech-to-text APIs enable you to translate audio and video files and live audio streams into text. This tool offers faster transcription speed than public cloud service providers and decent across. It is an all-in-one speech recognition platform built to serve startups, SMBs, SMEs, and agencies.

Features:

• Large Language Models, or LLMs, allow the creation of Generative AI tools on top of voice data
• It offers a speech summarization feature
• Quickly detects and monitors sensitive content, such as hate speech

Pros	Cons
Adds subtitles to videos and virtual meetings	Limited Customization
Automatically summarizes and analyzes sales calls	The accuracy for real-time audio is not that great

Pricing:

It offers a free plan. The premium plan starts at $0.12/hr.

Link: https://www.assemblyai.com/

Rev AI

Rev AI is one of the best Whisper AI alternatives that offers automated speech-to-text services powered by advanced machine learning algorithms. It is a wonderful option for highly accurate English language use cases that deliver high accuracy when essential text-to-speech software does not.

Features:

• It provides online integrations that improve workflow
• The tool generates transcription in real-time
• You can get positive, negative, and neutral statements from the text.

Pros	Cons
It can identify key topics in the text	Accuracy is not great for non-English languages
Excellent for auto-tagging	Relatively expensive

Pricing:

It offers three pay-as-you-go plans:

• Machine Translation: $0.02/minute
• Human Transcription: $1.50/minute
• Forced Alignment: $0.02/minute
• You can also opt for the Enterprise plan which can be customized.

Link: https://www.rev.ai/

Speechmatics

Speechmatics is the most accurate and inclusive speech-to-text API engine that provides accurate and flexible solutions. It is one of the leading experts in the field as it combines the best technologies, i.e., AI and ML, to unlock the business value of human speech. Whether you need transcription or translation, the platform provides a solution that can be integrated into your organization without any trouble.

Features:

• It offers real-time transcription, translation, and summarization
• It also provides numeral formatting
• The tool includes profanity and disfluency detection.

Pros	Cons
High accuracy and flexibility	Limited customer support
It offers Sentiment Analysis	Languages supported are less

Pricing:

It offers a free plan. There are two premium plans:

• Pay as you grow- Starts at $0.30/hour
• Enterprise Plan- Contact the sales team.

Link:

IBM Watson

IBM Watson is one of the best Whisper AI alternatives, enabling fast and accurate transcriptions in various languages. It provides keyword spotting and profanity filtering to filter specific words or inappropriate content. The best thing is that it is deployable on any cloud—public, private, hybrid, multi-cloud, or on-premises.

Features:

• It provides an automatic speech recognition option
• Allows you to analyze and correct weak audio signals before transcription starts
• It can detect up to 6 different speakers

Pros	Cons
It is customizable for your business	No self-training
Provides model training options	Low accuracy

Pricing:

The tool offers 30-day free trial. There are 4 paid price plans:

• Plus- Starting at $500
• Enterprise- Starts at $5000
• Premium- Customized (Contact the sales team)
• IBM Cloud Pak for Data Cartridge- Customized (Contact the sales team)

Link: https://www.ibm.com/products/speech-to-text

Kaldi

Kaldi is an excellent speech recognition tool famous in the research community for numerous years. It is highly accurate and allows you to train your own models.

Features:

• It offers a speech summarization feature
• Supports multiple languages
• It provides real-time streaming support

Pros	Cons
Low acquisition cost	Steep learning curve
Decent accuracy	Low speed

Pricing:

It is free to use.

Link: https://kaldi-asr.org/

LumenVox

LumenVox is one of the best Whisper AI alternatives, as its flexible speech-enabling technology allows you to create a solution that caters to your specific requirements.

Features:

• Accurate speech detection with speech tuning
• Easy implementation for any network architecture
• Accelerated ability to add new languages and dialects

Pros	Cons
Provides excellent voice automation and interactions	It can be iffy when the background or the environment is noisy
Built-in adaptability	Speaker–independent software is generally less accurate

Pricing:

Its free to use.

Link: https://www.lumenvox.com/

Deepgram

Power your apps with real-time speech recognition (speech-to-text and text-to-speech) with Deepgram. It is one of the best Whisper alternatives known for its low latency, data labeling and flexible deployment options.

Features

• It is a developer-focused provider with a rich ecosystem, dedicated support, and diverse SDK options.
• The tool is proficient in handling pre-recorded audio and real-time streams from numerous sources.
• Deepgram supports smart formatting, multiple languages, filler words, and speaker diarization.

Pros	Cons
Native real-time support with low latency	Occasional processing errors
Highly flexible	It can be expensive to implement

Pricing

It offers a pay-as-you-go plan that gives you $200 in credit absolutely free. You can also opt for its 2 other annual plans:

• Growth-$4k – 10k per year
• Enterprise- Contact the sales team to customize the pricing as per your requirements

Link: https://deepgram.com/

Amazon Transcribe

Amazon Transcribe model is part of the AWS platform that supports over 100 languages. It produces easy-to-read transcripts, improves accuracy with customization, ingests diverse audio input, and filters content to enhance customer privacy.

Features

• Easy to integrate if you are already in the AWS ecosystem
• Its Amazon Transcribe API enables you to analyze audio files stored in Amazon S3 and have the service return a text file of the transcribed speech.
• The tool offers domain-specific models tuned to telephone calls or multimedia video content.

Pros	Cons
Multilingual support	Poor accuracy for real-time audio
Integration with Google Cloud ecosystem	Limited custom model support

Pricing

Sign up and get started for free for the first 12 months. The Amazon Transcribe Free Tier allows you to analyze up to 60 audio minutes monthly. However, if you want more minutes, you can choose other paid plans:

• T1- $0.02400 (First 250,000 minutes)
• T2- $0.01500 (Next 750,000 minutes)
• T3- $0.01020 (Next 4,000,000 minutes)
• T4- $0.00780 (Over 5,000,000 minutes)

Link: https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/?nc=sn&loc=0

What is the best speech-to-text tool in 2024?

Considering all factors, Google Speech-to-Text offers the most convenient and flexible solution that can be integrated with other Google Cloud services. This model is best utilized by a GCP customer who wants to keep everything within one ecosystem. The tool is also known for its machine learning algorithms that reduce errors by 64% compared to other regular models and for adding real-time subtitles in your streaming content.

Conclusion

The mechanisms for evaluating a speech-to-text API have remained constant, including speed, accuracy, and price. These tools must match the cutting-edge offerings of a new company to bring value to the table.

We hope this list of 10 best Whisper AI alternatives has demystified the confusion by helping you choose the right speech recognition tool for your particular use case. These easy-to-use platforms offer a highly accurate transcription feature and support customization to suit your industry.

FAQs

Is there a better model than Whisper AI?

Some leading speech recognition tools supporting multilingual recognition, spoken language identification, and translation include Google Speech-to-Text, Microsoft Azure, and AssemblyAI.

What is the fastest Whisper AI?

Whisper JAX is known as the fastest Whisper AI. It is an optimized implementation of the Whisper model that runs on JAX with a TPU v4-8 in the backend.

Is Whisper Open AI free?

Before March 2023, Whisper AI used to offer its services for free. However, today it costs $0.006 per minute or $0.10 per 1000 seconds.