Head-to-head comparison based on real production benchmarks with Gulf Arabic callers.
ElevenLabs' realtime STT offering — poor quality and slow for Arabic.
Mistral's speech model — completely non-functional for Arabic.
Described as 'shit quality' in production testing. Not viable for Arabic.
Produced zero transcriptions for Arabic audio. Tested with and without explicit language parameter.
| Feature | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 | Mistral Voxtral Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Real-time streaming transcription | ✓ | ✗ |
| Multiple language support | ✓ | ✗ |
| LiveKit inference integration | ✓ | ✗ |
| Multilingual speech recognition (claimed) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Audio understanding | ✗ | ✓ |
| Capability | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 | Mistral Voxtral Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming support | ✓ | ✗ |
| LiveKit plugin | ✓ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| API style | WebSocket streaming | REST |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js | Python, Node.js |
Poor quality and poor latency for Arabic. Not recommended for any Arabic STT use case.
Does not work for Arabic at all. Zero transcriptions produced in testing despite claiming multilingual support.
ElevenLabs Scribe v2 has a quality rating of 1/5 (Poor). Described as 'shit quality' in production testing. Not viable for Arabic.
Both providers are viable options. ElevenLabs Scribe v2: Poor quality and poor latency for Arabic. Not recommended for any Arabic STT use case. Mistral Voxtral Mini: Does not work for Arabic at all. Zero transcriptions produced in testing despite claiming multilingual support.
ElevenLabs Scribe v2 starts at $5 per month (Includes STT credits). Mistral Voxtral Mini starts at Usage-based per request (Mistral API pricing).