Head-to-head comparison based on real production benchmarks with Gulf Arabic callers.
ElevenLabs' realtime STT offering — poor quality and slow for Arabic.
Full Whisper v3 on Groq — same poor Arabic quality as the turbo variant.
Described as 'shit quality' in production testing. Not viable for Arabic.
Described as 'still shit' in production testing. Non-turbo version did not improve quality.
| Feature | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 | Groq Whisper Large v3 |
|---|---|---|
| Real-time streaming transcription | ✓ | ✗ |
| Multiple language support | ✓ | ✗ |
| LiveKit inference integration | ✓ | ✗ |
| Hardware-accelerated inference | ✗ | ✓ |
| Full Whisper Large v3 model | ✗ | ✓ |
| Batch and real-time modes | ✗ | ✓ |
| Capability | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 | Groq Whisper Large v3 |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming support | ✓ | ✗ |
| LiveKit plugin | ✓ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| API style | WebSocket streaming | REST (OpenAI-compatible) |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js | Python, Node.js |
Poor quality and poor latency for Arabic. Not recommended for any Arabic STT use case.
Same poor Arabic quality as the turbo variant. Whisper models on Groq are not viable for Arabic speech recognition.
Groq Whisper Large v3 is faster with an average end-of-utterance delay of 32ms–3494ms, which is 1968ms faster than ElevenLabs Scribe v2.
ElevenLabs Scribe v2 has a quality rating of 1/5 (Poor). Described as 'shit quality' in production testing. Not viable for Arabic.
Both providers are viable options. ElevenLabs Scribe v2: Poor quality and poor latency for Arabic. Not recommended for any Arabic STT use case. Groq Whisper Large v3: Same poor Arabic quality as the turbo variant. Whisper models on Groq are not viable for Arabic speech recognition.
ElevenLabs Scribe v2 starts at $5 per month (Includes STT credits). Groq Whisper Large v3 starts at $0 per minute (Rate-limited free tier).