Azure AI Speech (Speech-to-Text)
Microsoft Azure's managed STT with batch, real-time, custom speech, and conversation transcription.
Microsoft Azure's managed STT with batch, real-time, custom speech, and conversation transcription.
Best for microsoft-shop teams, Office/Teams integrations, custom-domain speech models via Custom Speech. Pricing: from $1/hr (standard) and $0.30/hr (batch transcription).
What it is
Azure AI Speech is Microsoft's managed cognitive service for speech-to-text, text-to-speech, speaker recognition, and translation. The STT pipeline supports real-time, batch (per-file submitted to Azure storage), conversation transcription with speaker diarization, fast transcription, and Custom Speech for domain-tuned models. SDKs are available for C#, C++, Java, JavaScript, Python, Objective-C and Swift. HIPAA, SOC, ISO and FedRAMP compliance under the Azure compliance umbrella. Pricing differs by region, tier (standard vs free), and mode (real-time vs batch); enterprise customers usually negotiate committed-use discounts.
Watch out for: Custom Speech model training requires labelled data and a separate Speech Studio workflow; some neural features region-locked.
Install / use
az cognitiveservices account create --kind SpeechServices ...Features
| Speaker diarization | Yes |
| Word-level timestamps | Yes |
| Streaming / real-time | Yes |
| Languages supported | 100 |
| HIPAA eligible | Yes |
Azure AI Speech (Speech-to-Text) vs Whipscribe
| Feature | Azure AI Speech (Speech-to-Text) | Whipscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Transcription APIs | Transcription APIs |
| Pricing | from $1/hr (standard) and $0.30/hr (batch transcription) | free beta |
| Speaker diarization | Yes | Yes |
| Word timestamps | Yes | Yes |
| Streaming | Yes | No |
| Languages | 100 | 99 |
| Platforms | API, SDK | Web, API, MCP |
Alternatives to Azure AI Speech (Speech-to-Text)
Whipscribe is a managed faster-whisper + whisperX service. If you want transcripts without running infrastructure, paste a URL or drop a file in the form below — you'll have a transcript in seconds.