ElevenLabs vs OpenAI
ElevenLabs Scribe v2 vs OpenAI gpt-transcribe for transcription. Price: $3.67 per 1000 min vs $4.5 per 1000 min — edge ElevenLabs WER: 2.2% vs 3.3% — edge ElevenLabs Computed from public benchmarks with dated sources; updated 2026-08-20.
Head to head
| Axis | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 | OpenAI gpt-transcribe | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $3.67 per 1000 min | $4.5 per 1000 min | ElevenLabs |
| WER | 2.2% | 3.3% | ElevenLabs |
| Langs | 90 | — | — |
| Latency | 150 ms | — | — |
| diarization | ✓ | — | — |
| timestamps | ✓ | — | — |
| vocab | ✓ | ✓ | — |
Strengths & caveats
ElevenLabsHighest accuracy on the Artificial Analysis leaderboard (2.2% WER, an English-leaning aggregate); broad language coverage with full diarization, word-level timestamps and custom vocabulary. Not the cheapest comparable option; low-latency streaming runs on a separate Scribe v2 Realtime mode that is billed higher at $0.39/hr.OpenAIOpenAI's current recommended transcription model: both cheaper ($4.50/1000 min) and more accurate (3.3% WER) than the gpt-4o-transcribe tier it supersedes, with a keywords parameter for biasing terms. Returns plain JSON: no word-level timestamps (only the legacy whisper-1 emits them) and no native diarization — OpenAI ships a separate gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize model for speaker labels. Also billed per token as an alternative to the per-minute rate.
Sources
- Artificial Analysis — Speech to Text2026-08-20
- Open ASR Leaderboard2026-06-19