Head-to-head comparison based on real production benchmarks with Gulf Arabic callers.
Mistral's speech model — completely non-functional for Arabic.
Best-in-class Arabic STT with ultra-low latency. Production-tested winner.
Produced zero transcriptions for Arabic audio. Tested with and without explicit language parameter.
Accurately captures Gulf Arabic phrases. No user repetitions needed in production calls.
| Feature | Mistral Voxtral Mini | Deepgram Nova-3 |
|---|---|---|
| Multilingual speech recognition (claimed) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Audio understanding | ✓ | ✗ |
| Real-time streaming transcription | ✗ | ✓ |
| Automatic language detection | ✗ | ✓ |
| Endpointing / end-of-utterance detection | ✗ | ✓ |
| Punctuation and formatting | ✗ | ✓ |
| Word-level timestamps | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom vocabulary | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multichannel support | ✗ | ✓ |
| Capability | Mistral Voxtral Mini | Deepgram Nova-3 |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming support | ✗ | ✓ |
| LiveKit plugin | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| API style | REST | WebSocket streaming + REST |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js | Python, Node.js, Go, .NET, Rust |
Does not work for Arabic at all. Zero transcriptions produced in testing despite claiming multilingual support.
The clear winner for Arabic STT. Deepgram Nova-3 delivers excellent quality at 424ms average EOU delay — fast enough for real-time voice agents.
Deepgram Nova-3 has a quality rating of 5/5 (Excellent). Accurately captures Gulf Arabic phrases. No user repetitions needed in production calls.
Deepgram Nova-3 is recommended for production use. The clear winner for Arabic STT. Deepgram Nova-3 delivers excellent quality at 424ms average EOU delay — fast enough for real-time voice agents.
Mistral Voxtral Mini starts at Usage-based per request (Mistral API pricing). Deepgram Nova-3 starts at $0.0043 per minute (Nova-3 streaming).