Deepgram
Fast, cheap transcription API built for live voice apps.
Free
- Best for
- Real-time captions and voice agents
- On your PC
- No, online only
- Works on
- API, Web
- Version
- Nova-3 and Flux
What’s good
- Biggest free credit of the big APIs
- Very fast live transcription for voice apps
Downsides
- Error rate now well behind the leaders
- Developer tool, not an app for normal users
The details.
- For developers
- $0.0043 per minute recorded; $0.0077 per minute streaming (Nova-3)
- Version
- Nova-3 and Flux
- Open source
- No
- Website
- deepgram.com
How it ranks.
- Artificial Analysis speech to text, AA-WER % (Nova-3)#53 · 5.2% errors2026-11-05
Can I run it myself?
No. It only runs online.
Your prompts and files go to the company’s servers. See the local options in this category for a private alternative.
Want it offline? The best local option for speech to text is Whisper large-v3 turbo.