Head-to-head comparison based on real production benchmarks with Gulf Arabic callers.
Full Whisper v3 on Groq — same poor Arabic quality as the turbo variant.
Best-in-class Arabic STT with ultra-low latency. Production-tested winner.
Described as 'still shit' in production testing. Non-turbo version did not improve quality.
Accurately captures Gulf Arabic phrases. No user repetitions needed in production calls.
| Feature | Groq Whisper Large v3 | Deepgram Nova-3 |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware-accelerated inference | ✓ | ✗ |
| Full Whisper Large v3 model | ✓ | ✗ |
| Batch and real-time modes | ✓ | ✗ |
| Real-time streaming transcription | ✗ | ✓ |
| Automatic language detection | ✗ | ✓ |
| Endpointing / end-of-utterance detection | ✗ | ✓ |
| Punctuation and formatting | ✗ | ✓ |
| Word-level timestamps | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom vocabulary | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multichannel support | ✗ | ✓ |
| Capability | Groq Whisper Large v3 | Deepgram Nova-3 |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming support | ✗ | ✓ |
| LiveKit plugin | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| API style | REST (OpenAI-compatible) | WebSocket streaming + REST |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js | Python, Node.js, Go, .NET, Rust |
Same poor Arabic quality as the turbo variant. Whisper models on Groq are not viable for Arabic speech recognition.
The clear winner for Arabic STT. Deepgram Nova-3 delivers excellent quality at 424ms average EOU delay — fast enough for real-time voice agents.
Groq Whisper Large v3 is faster with an average end-of-utterance delay of 32ms–3494ms, which is 392ms faster than Deepgram Nova-3.
Deepgram Nova-3 has a quality rating of 5/5 (Excellent). Accurately captures Gulf Arabic phrases. No user repetitions needed in production calls.
Deepgram Nova-3 is recommended for production use. The clear winner for Arabic STT. Deepgram Nova-3 delivers excellent quality at 424ms average EOU delay — fast enough for real-time voice agents.
Groq Whisper Large v3 starts at $0 per minute (Rate-limited free tier). Deepgram Nova-3 starts at $0.0043 per minute (Nova-3 streaming).