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