Head-to-head comparison based on real production benchmarks with Gulf Arabic callers.
Fast Whisper inference on Groq hardware — poor Arabic quality with inconsistent latency.
High-quality Arabic STT from Google Cloud, but with significant latency.
Described as 'horrible' transcription quality for Arabic in production testing.
High quality transcription. Broad Arabic dialect support through ar-XA language code.
| Feature | Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo | Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware-accelerated inference | ✓ | ✗ |
| Whisper model compatibility | ✓ | ✗ |
| Batch and real-time modes | ✓ | ✗ |
| Real-time streaming transcription | ✗ | ✓ |
| 120+ language support | ✗ | ✓ |
| Automatic punctuation | ✗ | ✓ |
| Word-level timestamps | ✗ | ✓ |
| Speaker diarization | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom vocabulary | ✗ | ✓ |
| Medical and telephony models | ✗ | ✓ |
| Capability | Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo | Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming support | ✗ | ✓ |
| LiveKit plugin | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| API style | REST (OpenAI-compatible) | gRPC streaming + REST |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js | Python, Node.js, Go, Java, C#, Ruby, PHP |
Groq's fast hardware can't compensate for Whisper's poor Arabic handling. Quality is unacceptable and latency is too inconsistent for voice agents.
Excellent quality but too slow for real-time voice agents. Best suited for batch transcription or applications where latency isn't critical.
Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo is faster with an average end-of-utterance delay of 284ms–3388ms, which is 2092ms faster than Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3.
Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3 has a quality rating of 5/5 (Excellent). High quality transcription. Broad Arabic dialect support through ar-XA language code.
Both providers are viable options. Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo: Groq's fast hardware can't compensate for Whisper's poor Arabic handling. Quality is unacceptable and latency is too inconsistent for voice agents. Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3: Excellent quality but too slow for real-time voice agents. Best suited for batch transcription or applications where latency isn't critical.
Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo starts at $0 per minute (Rate-limited free tier). Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3 starts at $0.016 per 15 seconds (Chirp 3 model).