Guide · Speech APIs
Hindi speech-to-text APIs compared: prices and features, October 2026.
Hindi speech to text is sold by the minute or by the hour. On 16 October 2026, we transcribe recorded Hindi and Hinglish calls at ₹15 an hour of audio, Sarvam lists ₹0.49 a minute, and six others price in US dollars. On Hindi phone recordings, Mira STT made fewer word errors than Sarvam's Saaras v4, 18.3% against 21.6%, and Saaras did better on clean read speech. Still, the only score that settles it is one on your own recordings.
What does each Hindi speech-to-text API cost?
List prices, read on 16 October 2026 from the linked page, in each vendor’s currency, without volume deals. A dash means the pages didn’t say.
| Provider and model | Published price | Hindi, as published | Live streaming | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| mirai minds, Mira Transcribe | ₹15 per hour of recorded audio | Built for Hindi and Hinglish phone calls; also Gujarati, Tamil and Telugu; detects the main language | HTTP and WebSocket API at ₹0.30 a minute of audio; live inside every agent | Docs |
| Sarvam, Saaras | ₹0.49 a minute real-time or batch, pay as you go; ₹0.41 on Growth and Business; batch with diarization ₹0.59 | 23 languages, 22 Indian plus English; a codemix output mode | WebSocket streaming | Pricing, models |
| ElevenLabs, Scribe v2; Scribe v2 Realtime | $0.22; $0.39 per hour | Hindi among 90+ languages | Scribe v2 Realtime | Pricing, languages |
| Deepgram, Nova-3 | Pre-recorded $0.0043 a minute (multilingual $0.0052); streaming $0.0048 (limited-time; regular $0.0077) | Hindi (hi); the multilingual mode covers Hindi with English | WebSocket streaming | Pricing, languages |
| Google Cloud, Speech-to-Text V2 | Standard $0.016 a minute for the first 500,000 minutes a month; dynamic batch $0.003 | hi-IN on chirp_3 (us, eu regions), chirp_2 and telephony models | — | Pricing, languages |
| Microsoft Azure, Speech | Real-time $1 per hour; fast $0.36; batch $0.18 | hi-IN listed, including fast transcription | Real-time transcription | Pricing, languages |
| Amazon Transcribe | US East examples: streaming $0.01 a minute, batch $0.006; tiered and varies by region | Hindi (hi-IN), batch and streaming | Streaming | Pricing, languages |
| OpenAI, gpt-transcribe; gpt-4o-transcribe; gpt-4o-mini-transcribe | $0.0045; $0.006; $0.003 a minute (estimated) | Language hints by ISO code; whisper-1 follows Whisper’s 98 languages | gpt-live-transcribe, $0.017 a minute | Pricing, guide |
Speaker labels are included in our ₹15. Sarvam prices batch with diarization separately, Deepgram and Azure charge an add-on, and OpenAI uses a separate model, gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize.
What does an hour of Hindi audio cost?
At list price, before tax and free tiers:
| Provider and model | Working | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Mira Transcribe | 1 × ₹15 | ₹15 |
| Sarvam Saaras, batch, pay as you go | 60 × ₹0.49 | ₹29.40 |
| ElevenLabs Scribe v2 | 1 × $0.22 | $0.22 |
| Deepgram Nova-3 Monolingual, pre-recorded | 60 × $0.0043 | $0.258 |
| Google Speech-to-Text V2, dynamic batch | 60 × $0.003 | $0.18 |
| Azure batch transcription | 1 × $0.18 | $0.18 |
| Amazon Transcribe batch, US East example | 60 × $0.006 | $0.36 |
| OpenAI gpt-transcribe | 60 × $0.0045 | $0.27 |
Convert the dollar figures at the rate you pay. At small volume, free allowances matter: Azure gives 5 hours of real-time transcription a month, Amazon 60 minutes a month for a year, and Deepgram $200 of credit.
Which one is most accurate?
Vendors measure accuracy their own way, so we don’t repeat their figures. On 20 October 2026 we sent the same public recordings to Mira STT, our own Hindi speech recognition, and to Sarvam’s Saaras v4, each through its own API, and scored both the same way.
| Test | Mira STT | Sarvam Saaras v4 |
|---|---|---|
| Hindi phone calls, 499 clips at 8 kHz | 18.3% | 21.6% |
| Tamil, IndicVoices | 25.4% | 28.5% |
| Clean read Hindi, Kathbath | 10.1% | 5.8% |
| Final transcript after the caller stops, p80 | 82 ms | 290 ms |
Read the limits with the numbers. Lower is better on every row, and Saaras wins on clean read speech. The other companies weren’t in this test, so it says nothing about them. Mira Transcribe, our product for recordings, adds more passes on top, so the table describes the recogniser alone. The method is on the Mira STT page.
How do I test it on my own audio?
- Pick twenty to fifty recordings that sound like production.
- Have a Hindi speaker write reference transcripts. Agree first how English words are written: “ऑर्डर” and “order” are one word to a listener and two to a WER script.
- Normalise spellings that sound the same, like अन्दर and अंदर. Leave grammar alone: है and हैं stay different words.
- Send the same files and language setting to each service, plus any vocabulary it accepts.
- Score word error rate, then read the worst ten yourself, watching names, numbers and amounts.
- Check speaker labels separately. Agent and customer swapped is still wrong.
With us, upload each file to POST /v2/transcriptions with a line of context and your vocabulary, then read the job until it completes; the transcription guide has the requests.
Building a calling agent? Compare per-minute plans instead. Ours cost ₹1.50 a minute all-in on the volume plan, recognition included.
Sources
These are the references this guide is built on.
References reviewed on . Measurement dates and experimental limits are stated in the article. Check current API and runtime documentation when integrating.
- docs.miraiminds.co
- Transcribe recorded calls (Voice Infra)
- voice.miraiminds.co
- Mira STT benchmark
- sarvam.ai
- Sarvam API pricing
- docs.sarvam.ai
- Sarvam Saaras models
- elevenlabs.io
- ElevenLabs API pricing
- elevenlabs.io
- ElevenLabs speech to text
- deepgram.com
- Deepgram pricing
- developers.deepgram.com
- Deepgram models and languages
- cloud.google.com
- Google Cloud Speech-to-Text pricing
- cloud.google.com
- Google Speech-to-Text supported languages
- azure.microsoft.com
- Azure Speech pricing
- learn.microsoft.com
- Azure Speech language support
- aws.amazon.com
- Amazon Transcribe pricing
- docs.aws.amazon.com
- Amazon Transcribe supported languages
- developers.openai.com
- OpenAI API pricing
- developers.openai.com
- OpenAI speech to text guide
Questions
These are the questions developers ask us most.
Which Hindi speech-to-text API is most accurate?
It depends on the audio. On 499 public Hindi phone recordings at 8 kHz, Mira STT made 18.3% word errors, against 21.6% for Sarvam's Saaras v4 on the same clips. On clean read Hindi, Saaras does better, 5.8% against our 10.1%. Score two or three services on your own recordings.
Can you transcribe live audio?
Mira STT runs live inside every Voice Infra agent, and on its own over HTTP or a WebSocket at ₹0.30 a minute of audio. Recorded calls go through the transcription API, at ₹15 an hour of audio.
How should Hinglish be written in a transcript?
Decide before you score anything. Our transcripts write Hindi in Devanagari and English words in Latin script, the way the speakers switched, and Sarvam's codemix output mode does the same. A transcript that writes English in Devanagari can be right and still score badly against a Latin-script reference.
Is transcription priced like the agents?
No. A whole phone agent on our volume plan is ₹1.50 a minute all-in, with our line and insights. Transcribing a recording is ₹15 per hour of audio, which is ₹0.25 a minute.
Still deciding? Ask us.
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