Modulate Competitors & Alternatives: 7 Best Modulate Alternatives for Speech-to-Text in 2026

Overview

It lists at $0.03 per audio hour for batch transcription. The best Modulate alternatives for speech-to-text are Deepgram, AssemblyAI, ElevenLabs, Speechmatics, OpenAI’s Whisper and GPT models, Google Cloud Speech-to-Text and Amazon Transcribe. Each comes at a higher per hour cost at list price, so teams usually switch vendors when they have a requirement Modulate does not cover today, not for price or accuracy.

The most common reasons to evaluate a Modulate alternative are:

• Running transcription on your own servers, in a private VPC or on-device.
• Buying speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice agent infrastructure from one vendor.
• Keeping all audio processing inside an AWS or Google Cloud account you already use.
• Getting emotion or accent signals from live streams (Modulate offers these on batch audio today).

This guide compares seven speech-to-text providers against Modulate Transcribe:

1. Deepgram
2. AssemblyAI
3. ElevenLabs
4. Speechmatics
5. OpenAI (Whisper and GPT transcription models)
6. Google Cloud Speech-to-Text
7. Amazon Transcribe

All pricing below is public pay-as-you-go list pricing as of October 2026, shown at regular rates. Where a vendor runs a limited-time promotion, we note it separately. Volume discounts change often, so confirm pricing with each vendor before you buy. If you are looking for alternatives to Modulate’s deepfake detection or ToxMod voice moderation products, skip to the section on Modulate’s other products near the end.

What is Modulate?

Modulate is a voice intelligence company that builds audio-native AI models. Because Modulate’s models analyze the audio signal itself, they can detect tone, stress, emotion and synthetic voices that get lost in a text transcript. Modulate offers its technology through three product lines:

• Modulate Transcribe is the speech-to-text API. It powers batch transcription over REST and real-time streaming over WebSocket. It’s trained on over 500 million hours of real-world, conversational audio from calls, meetings and game voice chat. Some of the pages on Modulate’s website refer to Modulate Transcribe as “Velma Transcribe.” It’s the same product.
• Velma is Modulate’s Ensemble Listening Model (ELM). Velma runs Transcribe concurrently with 100+ specialized models, each trained on one signal (emotions, stress, speaker role, synthetic speech) then layers those results to create conversation-level findings like emotion & intent, fraud detection, escalations and policy breaches.
• ToxMod is Modulate’s real-time voice moderation product used in gaming and social apps. ToxMod listens to live voice chat and detects harassment, hate speech and other harmful behavior.

This page is comparing speech-to-text APIs, so we are using Modulate Transcribe to benchmark against alternatives.

Modulate Transcribe’s main capabilities include:

• Batch transcription over REST and sub-second streaming transcription over WebSocket
• Support for 70+ languages and dialects on the Multilingual model, plus an English Fast model
• Speaker diarization included in every transcription, at no additional cost
• Timestamped transcripts
• Optional add-ons (included in the same request as transcription): emotion detection (20+ emotions), accent detection (20+ accents), PII/PHI tagging and keyterm prompting
• PII/PHI redaction of the transcript as well as audio (both batch or real time) with coverage of 100+ entity types

Modulate Pricing

Modulate publishes self-serve pay-as-you-go pricing per hour of audio. New accounts get free credits worth up to 400 hours of transcription, with no credit card required.

Add-ons attach to a Transcribe request. Other Velma models are billed separately:

At 10,000 hours of multilingual audio a month, Modulate Transcribe costs $300 for batch or $600 for streaming, with diarization included. Annual commitments add volume discounts.

Why Consider a Modulate Alternative?

Modulate Transcribe has the lowest list price of any provider in this guide and ranks at the top of the main public accuracy benchmark. The reasons teams still look at other vendors are about fit:

Deployment control. Modulate Transcribe is a cloud API. If your security policy requires audio to stay on your own servers, in a private VPC or on a device, you need a vendor with a self-hosted or on-premises option, such as Deepgram, Speechmatics or a self-hosted Whisper model.

One vendor for listening and speaking. Modulate builds models that understand voice. It does not sell text-to-speech or a voice agent runtime. Teams building voice agents sometimes prefer one contract that covers speech-to-text, an LLM layer and generated speech. Deepgram, AssemblyAI, ElevenLabs and OpenAI all sell that bundle.

Cloud consolidation. If your data, analytics and contact center already run on AWS or Google Cloud, the in-platform speech service can simplify procurement, identity management and data residency, even at a higher per-hour price.

Speech translation. Modulate Transcribe returns text in the language that was spoken and does not translate it. If you need speech translated into English or another language as part of the same workflow, OpenAI’s whisper-1 translates speech to English, and Google Cloud and AWS pair transcription with their own translation services.

Data-handling terms. On self-serve, pay-as-you-go accounts, taking part in Modulate’s model improvement program is a condition of the tier. Enterprise customers on annual commitment agreements can opt out of having their audio used for training. If your policy rules out any training use on a self-serve plan, compare each vendor’s terms before you sign.

7 Top Modulate Alternatives

Deepgram

Deepgram is a developer-focused voice AI platform built around low-latency streaming. Its Nova-3 model handles general batch and streaming transcription. Flux is a conversational model with turn detection built in for voice agents. Deepgram also sells Aura-2 text-to-speech and a Voice Agent API. Enterprise customers can self-host.

Key capabilities include:

• Batch and streaming transcription with Nova-3 (monolingual and multilingual)
• Flux for voice agents with built-in end-of-turn detection
• More than 50 languages on Nova-3
• Speaker diarization, keyterm prompting and PII redaction
• Self-hosted and on-premises deployment for enterprise customers
• Text-to-speech and a Voice Agent API

Deepgram Pricing

Deepgram’s published pay-as-you-go pricing (October 2026) puts Nova-3 pre-recorded audio at $0.0043/min (about $0.26/hour) for one language and $0.0052/min (about $0.31/hour) multilingual, with diarization included on batch. Streaming Nova-3 is $0.0077/min (about $0.46/hour) monolingual and $0.0092/min (about $0.55/hour) multilingual at regular rates.

Deepgram currently lists limited-time promotional streaming rates of about $0.29/hour and $0.35/hour. Streaming diarization adds about $0.12/hour, PII redaction about $0.12/hour and keyterm prompting about $0.08/hour. New accounts get $200 in credit. The prepaid Growth plan ($4,000+ a year) lowers rates by up to 20%.

Deepgram vs. Modulate

Choose Deepgram if you need self-hosted deployment, a voice agent stack with built-in turn detection or text-to-speech from the same vendor. Choose Modulate if cost and accuracy on conversational audio come first. English batch transcription costs $0.025/hour on Modulate against $0.26/hour on Deepgram Nova-3. English streaming with diarization costs $0.05/hour against about $0.58/hour at Deepgram’s regular rate.

Modulate also returns PII/PHI tagging, emotion and accent signals on the same request (available as optional add-ons), which Deepgram does not offer. See the full Modulate vs. Deepgram comparison or read our guide to Deepgram alternatives.

AssemblyAI

AssemblyAI is a speech AI company that sells developer APIs for transcription and speech understanding. Its Universal model family covers pre-recorded and real-time audio. Its Voice Agent API and LLM Gateway extend it into voice agents and transcript analysis.

Key capabilities include:

• Pre-recorded, synchronous and streaming transcription
• Up to 99 languages on Universal-2
• Speaker diarization, speaker identification and keyterm prompting
• PII redaction for text and audio
• Sentiment analysis, entity detection and summarization
• Voice Agent API and a self-hosted option for enterprise customers

AssemblyAI Pricing

AssemblyAI’s published pricing (October 2026) is $0.21/hour for Universal-3.5 Pro and $0.15/hour for Universal-2 on pre-recorded audio. Streaming is $0.45/hour for Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime and $0.15/hour for Universal-Streaming. Speaker diarization adds $0.02/hour on pre-recorded audio and $0.12/hour on streams. PII text redaction adds $0.08/hour for pre-recorded audio. The Voice Agent API costs $4.50/hour.

AssemblyAI vs. Modulate

Choose AssemblyAI if you want transcript-based speech understanding (summaries, topics, entity detection) and a voice agent product from one API. Choose Modulate if you need the lowest cost per hour and accuracy on messy conversations. Batch transcription with diarization costs $0.03/hour on Modulate against $0.23/hour on Universal-3.5 Pro. Streaming with diarization costs $0.06/hour against $0.57/hour on Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime.

Modulate Transcribe was ranked #1 on the Open ASR Leaderboard, ahead of AssemblyAI’s Universal models. On Earnings-22, a benchmark of noisy, accented earnings calls, Modulate posts a 7.55% word error rate against 11.90% for AssemblyAI Universal-3. Read our guide to AssemblyAI alternatives for the full field.

ElevenLabs

ElevenLabs is best known for text-to-speech, voice cloning and dubbing. Its Scribe models bring it into speech-to-text, which makes it a fit for products that need to hear and speak, such as voice agents and media pipelines that transcribe and then dub.

Key capabilities include:

• Scribe v2 for batch transcription and Scribe v2 Realtime for streaming (about 150 ms latency)
• 90+ languages
• Speaker diarization on batch transcription
• Keyterm prompting and entity detection add-ons
• Text-to-speech, voice cloning, dubbing and voice agents

ElevenLabs Pricing

ElevenLabs’ published API pricing (October 2026) is $0.22/hour for Scribe v2 and $0.39/hour for Scribe v2 Realtime. Keyterm prompting adds $0.05/hour on batch and entity detection adds $0.07/hour. Annual Business plans lower the rates.

ElevenLabs vs. Modulate

Choose ElevenLabs if generated voice, cloning or dubbing sits at the center of your product and transcription is one part of it. Choose Modulate if your product listens to real conversations. Batch transcription costs $0.03/hour on Modulate against $0.22/hour on Scribe v2. Streaming costs $0.06/hour against $0.39/hour.

Modulate Transcribe was ranked #1 on the Open ASR Leaderboard, ahead of ElevenLabs Scribe v2. ElevenLabs does not list speaker diarization for Scribe v2 Realtime, so multi-speaker live calls are harder to separate. Read our guide to ElevenLabs alternatives.

Speechmatics

Speechmatics is one of the longest-running speech recognition vendors. It offers batch and real-time transcription in the cloud and some of the widest deployment choices available: on-premises containers, a virtual appliance and on-device models.

Key capabilities include:

• Melia 1, a multilingual model that covers 56 languages and handles language switching mid-sentence
• Standard and Enhanced accuracy tiers for batch and real-time audio
• Speaker diarization included on all models
• Custom dictionaries
• Cloud, on-premises and on-device deployment
• Text-to-speech and a voice agent speech-to-text model

Speechmatics Pricing

Speechmatics’ published pricing (October 2026) for pre-recorded audio is $0.12/hour for Melia 1, $0.23/hour for Standard and $0.38/hour for Enhanced. Real-time transcription is $0.23/hour for Standard and $0.40/hour for Enhanced. New accounts get $100 in credit, volume discounts reach 25% and customers who allow their data to be used for model training get 33% off.

Speechmatics vs. Modulate

Choose Speechmatics if audio must stay inside your own infrastructure or on a device, which Modulate does not support today. Choose Modulate if you can use a cloud API. Melia 1 is the lowest-priced batch model among the alternatives at $0.12/hour, which is still four times Modulate’s $0.03/hour multilingual rate. For live audio, Speechmatics Standard costs $0.23/hour against Modulate’s $0.06/hour.

OpenAI (Whisper and GPT transcription models)

OpenAI released Whisper as open-source model weights under the MIT license. Teams still self-host it for multilingual transcription. OpenAI’s managed API has since added gpt-transcribe, gpt-4o-transcribe and gpt-4o-mini-transcribe for recorded audio and gpt-live-transcribe for real-time streams.

Key capabilities include:

• Open-source Whisper weights for self-hosting
• Managed transcription models for files and live streams
• Broad multilingual coverage and speech translation to English with whisper-1
• A separate diarization model, gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize
• A large set of third-party tools built around Whisper

OpenAI Pricing

OpenAI’s published API pricing (October 2026) is $0.0045/min (about $0.27/hour) for gpt-transcribe, $0.006/min ($0.36/hour) for gpt-4o-transcribe and whisper-1 and $0.003/min ($0.18/hour) for gpt-4o-mini-transcribe.

Live transcription with gpt-live-transcribe costs $0.017/min (about $1.02/hour). The diarization model is billed per token. Self-hosted Whisper has no license fee, but you pay for GPUs, engineering and upkeep.

OpenAI vs. Modulate

Choose self-hosted Whisper if you need full control of the model and have the engineering time to run it, add diarization and keep latency down. Choose Modulate if you want a managed API built for conversations.

Modulate Transcribe was ranked #1 on the Open ASR Leaderboard, and on the AMI Meeting Corpus it avoids more than 70% of the errors made by OpenAI’s gpt-4o-transcribe. Its $0.06/hour streaming rate is about one seventeenth of gpt-live-transcribe’s $1.02/hour.

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text is Google Cloud’s speech recognition service, built on the Chirp model family. It fits teams that already run storage, analytics and AI workloads on Google Cloud.

Key capabilities include:

• Batch, synchronous and streaming recognition
• Chirp 3 coverage of more than 100 language and locale combinations
• Speaker diarization (batch only on Chirp 3)
• Speech adaptation for custom terms
• Regional data residency and native Google Cloud integrations

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text Pricing

Google’s published V2 pricing (October 2026) is $0.016/min (about $0.96/hour) for standard recognition on the first 500,000 minutes a month, falling to $0.004/min at the highest volume tier. Dynamic Batch, which returns results within 24 hours, costs $0.003/min (about $0.18/hour). New Google Cloud customers get $300 in credit.

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text vs. Modulate

Choose Google if transcription is one piece of a larger Google Cloud deployment and procurement or data residency rules favor staying in one account. Choose Modulate for cost and conversational accuracy. Standard recognition costs 32 times Modulate’s $0.03/hour multilingual batch rate. Even next-day Dynamic Batch costs six times as much.

Amazon Transcribe

Amazon Transcribe is AWS’s managed speech recognition service. It connects directly to Amazon S3, Amazon Connect and other AWS analytics and AI services. It also has specialized versions for contact center analytics and medical transcription.

Key capabilities include:

• Batch and streaming transcription
• Speaker diarization and channel identification
• Custom vocabularies and custom language models
• PII identification and redaction
• Call Analytics for contact centers and Transcribe Medical

Amazon Transcribe Pricing

Amazon’s published pricing (October 2026, US East) is $0.006/min (about $0.36/hour) for standard batch transcription and $0.01/min (about $0.60/hour) for streaming. PII redaction adds $0.0024/min (about $0.14/hour). Call Analytics costs $0.03/min ($1.80/hour) and Transcribe Medical $0.075/min ($4.50/hour). Rates fall at higher volume tiers.

Amazon Transcribe vs. Modulate

Choose Amazon Transcribe if your contact center runs on Amazon Connect and keeping every service inside AWS matters more than the per-hour rate. Choose Modulate if it does not.

Standard batch transcription on Amazon costs twelve times Modulate’s multilingual batch rate. Streaming costs ten times as much ($0.60/hour against $0.06/hour).

How to Choose the Best Modulate Alternative

Start with the requirement that rules Modulate out. Write down the specific gap: on-premises deployment, text-to-speech from the same vendor, a cloud you have standardized on or live emotion labels. If none of these applies, an alternative will usually cost you more without adding accuracy.

Test accuracy on your own audio. Public benchmarks are a starting point. Run a sample of your hardest recordings (crosstalk, accents, poor phone lines) through each shortlisted API and compare word error rates. The SpeechTxt comparison tool runs the same file through several providers side by side.

Price the full workload. Add diarization, redaction and keyterm prompting to the base rate, check whether streaming costs more than batch and multiply by your real monthly volume. Watch for promotional rates that will reset.

Check security and data terms. Compare certifications, retention periods, regional hosting, redaction of the audio itself and each vendor’s policy on training with customer data.

List prices for each provider’s main pay-as-you-go model, per hour of audio:

Alternatives to Modulate’s Other Products

Searches for Modulate alternatives often come from teams using Modulate for something other than transcription. Two other product areas have their own competitors.

Deepfake detection alternatives

The main alternatives to Modulate’s deepfake detection are Pindrop and Resemble AI. Modulate’s deepfake detection API costs $0.25/hour and flags AI-generated and cloned voices. Pindrop is a contact center security platform built on voice biometrics and call metadata.

Resemble AI is a voice generation company that also sells detection tools. See Modulate vs. Pindrop and Modulate vs. Resemble AI for side-by-side comparisons.

ToxMod alternatives for voice moderation

The main ToxMod alternatives for game voice moderation are GGWP and Hive. ToxMod is Modulate’s voice moderation product, used by studios such as Activision to moderate live voice chat. GGWP added voice moderation for Unity’s Vivox voice chat in March 2025. Hive also offers an audio moderation API alongside its image and text moderation.

Why Many Teams Stay with Modulate

For teams that transcribe real conversations in the cloud, the case for staying with Modulate Transcribe rests on four numbers and one design choice.

The lowest list price in the category. Modulate Transcribe costs $0.025 to $0.03/hour for batch audio and $0.05 to $0.06/hour for streaming, with diarization included. The next lowest batch rate among the alternatives is Speechmatics Melia 1 at $0.12/hour. The next lowest streaming rate is AssemblyAI Universal-Streaming at $0.15/hour before diarization.

Accuracy on noisy, multi-speaker audio. Modulate Transcribe was ranked #1 on Hugging Face’s Open ASR Leaderboard, with an industry-leading 14.9% word error rate on the AMI Meeting Corpus, a set of real multi-speaker meetings.

Signals from the audio, not the transcript. Emotion, accent, PII/PHI tagging and deepfake detection read the waveform directly and run through the same API account. Most alternatives send an LLM over the finished transcript, which cannot understand tone or tell a cloned voice from a real one.

Redaction of the audio itself. Modulate can return a redacted audio stream as well as a redacted transcript, in real time, for $0.08/hour.

Specialized models working together. Velma coordinates many purpose-built models, each tuned to one signal, so teams can move from transcription to fraud, compliance and behavior detection on the same platform. Mike Pappas, Modulate’s CEO and co-founder, described the reasoning when Modulate introduced Ensemble Listening Models:

“Real conversations carry meaning far beyond the words themselves. Tone, timing, hesitation, emotion, and interaction patterns all shape what’s actually being communicated.”

- Mike Pappas, CEO and co-founder, Modulate (January 2026)

A transcript keeps the words and drops the rest, which is why audio-native analysis catches things a transcript-first pipeline misses.

Pick an alternative when you need on-premises deployment, text-to-speech from the same vendor or a single-cloud architecture. Otherwise, Modulate Transcribe gives you the lowest cost per hour, industry-leading benchmark accuracy and audio-native signals in one API. Get free API access with up to 400 hours of credits and test it on your own recordings.

Modulate Alternatives FAQ