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.
Mistral's speech model — completely non-functional for Arabic.
Described as 'still shit' in production testing. Non-turbo version did not improve quality.
Produced zero transcriptions for Arabic audio. Tested with and without explicit language parameter.
| Feature | Groq Whisper Large v3 | Mistral Voxtral Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware-accelerated inference | ✓ | ✗ |
| Full Whisper Large v3 model | ✓ | ✗ |
| Batch and real-time modes | ✓ | ✗ |
| Multilingual speech recognition (claimed) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Audio understanding | ✗ | ✓ |
| Capability | Groq Whisper Large v3 | Mistral Voxtral Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming support | ✗ | ✗ |
| LiveKit plugin | ✗ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| API style | REST (OpenAI-compatible) | REST |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js | Python, Node.js |
Same poor Arabic quality as the turbo variant. Whisper models on Groq are not viable for Arabic speech recognition.
Does not work for Arabic at all. Zero transcriptions produced in testing despite claiming multilingual support.
Groq Whisper Large v3 has a quality rating of 1/5 (Poor). Described as 'still shit' in production testing. Non-turbo version did not improve quality.
Both providers are viable options. Groq Whisper Large v3: Same poor Arabic quality as the turbo variant. Whisper models on Groq are not viable for Arabic speech recognition. Mistral Voxtral Mini: Does not work for Arabic at all. Zero transcriptions produced in testing despite claiming multilingual support.
Groq Whisper Large v3 starts at $0 per minute (Rate-limited free tier). Mistral Voxtral Mini starts at Usage-based per request (Mistral API pricing).