Head-to-head comparison based on real production benchmarks with Gulf Arabic callers.
Fast Whisper inference on Groq hardware — poor Arabic quality with inconsistent latency.
ElevenLabs' realtime STT offering — poor quality and slow for Arabic.
Described as 'horrible' transcription quality for Arabic in production testing.
Described as 'shit quality' in production testing. Not viable for Arabic.
| Feature | Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware-accelerated inference | ✓ | ✗ |
| Whisper model compatibility | ✓ | ✗ |
| Batch and real-time modes | ✓ | ✗ |
| Real-time streaming transcription | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multiple language support | ✗ | ✓ |
| LiveKit inference integration | ✗ | ✓ |
| Capability | Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming support | ✗ | ✓ |
| LiveKit plugin | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| API style | REST (OpenAI-compatible) | WebSocket streaming |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js | Python, Node.js |
Groq's fast hardware can't compensate for Whisper's poor Arabic handling. Quality is unacceptable and latency is too inconsistent for voice agents.
Poor quality and poor latency for Arabic. Not recommended for any Arabic STT use case.
Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo is faster with an average end-of-utterance delay of 284ms–3388ms, which is 1716ms faster than ElevenLabs Scribe v2.
Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo has a quality rating of 1/5 (Poor). Described as 'horrible' transcription quality for Arabic in production testing.
Both providers are viable options. Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo: Groq's fast hardware can't compensate for Whisper's poor Arabic handling. Quality is unacceptable and latency is too inconsistent for voice agents. ElevenLabs Scribe v2: Poor quality and poor latency for Arabic. Not recommended for any Arabic STT use case.
Groq Whisper Large v3 Turbo starts at $0 per minute (Rate-limited free tier). ElevenLabs Scribe v2 starts at $5 per month (Includes STT credits).