Google Cloud Speech-to-Text vs Happy Scribe

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text converts audio into text and provides APIs for adding speech recognition to applications. It offers synchronous, asynchronous, and streaming recognition for post-processing, periodic, or real-time results, and lists support for 85+ languages and variants. Model adaptation lets users provide hints for domain-specific terms, rare words, and phrases. Speaker diarization can predict which speaker produced each utterance; the service also supports multichannel recognition and says it can handle noisy audio without additional noise cancellation. Specialized models are available for voice control, phone calls, and video transcription. API v2 includes data residency, audit logging, and customer-managed encryption keys. Speech-to-Text On-Prem runs in private data centers and is offered through a sales contact. Developer access includes REST and RPC APIs, client libraries, and command-line quickstarts. Listed pricing includes Speech-to-Text V2 API standard recognition models at $0.02 a month, billed at $0.016 / 1 minute for 0–500,000 minutes, with lower rates at higher monthly volumes; V1 standard plans include 60 free minutes per month. Costs depend on duration, channel count, model, batch method, and API version, with each channel billed separately.

Happy Scribe turns recordings and meetings into transcripts, subtitles, and translations, with support for 150+ languages. It identifies speakers, adds timestamps, and offers summaries, action items, custom templates, AI Chat, diarization, and searchable transcripts. Exports are available in DOCX, TXT, SRT, and MP4, and API access is supported. Meetings can connect with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Google Calendar, and Outlook Calendar. iPhone and Android apps offer offline recording. A Mac desktop app for recording calls without a bot is described as coming soon. The free plan allows unlimited meeting recordings, limited to 45 minutes each, with limited history and a 10-minute AI trial. Basic is $8.50 a month, Pro is $19 a month, and Business is $59 a month. Users can also buy credit top-ups without a subscription; plan credits reset each billing cycle, while top-ups remain until used. Data is not used to train AI models unless users opt in. Happy Scribe lists SOC 2 Type II certification, GDPR compliance, EU data residency, and TLS encryption.