Speechmatics vs OpenAI
Speechmatics Enhanced vs OpenAI gpt-transcribe for transcription. WER: 4% vs 3.3% — edge OpenAI Computed from public benchmarks with dated sources; updated 2026-08-20.
Head to head
| Axis | Speechmatics Enhanced | OpenAI gpt-transcribe | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | —* | $4.5 per 1000 min | — |
| WER | 4% | 3.3% | OpenAI |
| Langs | 70 | — | — |
| Latency | 500 ms | — | — |
| diarization | ✓ | — | — |
| timestamps | ✓ | — | — |
| vocab | ✓ | ✓ | — |
* token-/credit-priced — the headline understates real per-unit cost, so no price edge is awarded.
Strengths & caveats
SpeechmaticsLong-standing broad multilingual coverage (~70 languages) with diarization, timestamps and a custom dictionary. Vendor no longer publishes per-model rates (the pricing page defers to a portal), so the June 2026 $6.70/1000 min could not be re-verified and third-party figures conflict up to 2-3x higher; the price is therefore marked not comparable. Mid-pack accuracy (4.0% WER).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