Head-to-head comparison based on real production benchmarks with Gulf Arabic callers.
Full Whisper v3 on Groq — same poor Arabic quality as the turbo variant.
High-quality Arabic STT from Google Cloud, but with significant latency.
Described as 'still shit' in production testing. Non-turbo version did not improve quality.
High quality transcription. Broad Arabic dialect support through ar-XA language code.
| Feature | Groq Whisper Large v3 | Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware-accelerated inference | ✓ | ✗ |
| Full Whisper Large v3 model | ✓ | ✗ |
| Batch and real-time modes | ✓ | ✗ |
| Real-time streaming transcription | ✗ | ✓ |
| 120+ language support | ✗ | ✓ |
| Automatic punctuation | ✗ | ✓ |
| Word-level timestamps | ✗ | ✓ |
| Speaker diarization | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom vocabulary | ✗ | ✓ |
| Medical and telephony models | ✗ | ✓ |
| Capability | Groq Whisper Large v3 | Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming support | ✗ | ✓ |
| LiveKit plugin | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| API style | REST (OpenAI-compatible) | gRPC streaming + REST |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js | Python, Node.js, Go, Java, C#, Ruby, PHP |
Same poor Arabic quality as the turbo variant. Whisper models on Groq are not viable for Arabic speech recognition.
Excellent quality but too slow for real-time voice agents. Best suited for batch transcription or applications where latency isn't critical.
Groq Whisper Large v3 is faster with an average end-of-utterance delay of 32ms–3494ms, which is 2344ms faster than Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3.
Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3 has a quality rating of 5/5 (Excellent). High quality transcription. Broad Arabic dialect support through ar-XA language code.
Both providers are viable options. Groq Whisper Large v3: Same poor Arabic quality as the turbo variant. Whisper models on Groq are not viable for Arabic speech recognition. Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3: Excellent quality but too slow for real-time voice agents. Best suited for batch transcription or applications where latency isn't critical.
Groq Whisper Large v3 starts at $0 per minute (Rate-limited free tier). Google Cloud STT — Chirp 3 starts at $0.016 per 15 seconds (Chirp 3 model).