the Verli blog

Notes on speech, translation, and building with audio

Hands-on write-ups from building live transcription and translation: benchmarks, tradeoffs, and the data behind the decisions.

Logos of the twelve speech-to-text API providers compared in this article.
GuideJuly 15, 2026 · 13 min read

Choosing a Speech-to-Text API in 2026: Pricing and Features Compared

A data-first look at 12 speech-to-text APIs plus the open-source models you can self-host: per-hour pricing, real-time streaming, built-in translation, languages, diarization, deployment, and what open models actually cost to run. No winner named, just the tradeoffs, with sources.