Gladia
Multilingual speech-to-text API with real-time streaming and audio intelligence bundled into one call.
Gladia is the pick when multilingual coverage and bundled enrichment are hard requirements, not nice-to-haves. Deepgram still holds an edge on raw English-only WER, and AssemblyAI has a broader mature ecosystem, but once you factor in included diarization, NER, sentiment, translation, and node-level audio intelligence across 100+ languages, the math favors Gladia for anything shipping past English. The main friction is operational: billing is a prepaid credit wallet with a one-time €50 credit rather than a recurring free allowance, so budget monitoring sits with you. For European teams that need EU data residency plus SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO 27001 coverage, few STT vendors match that
Verified 4d ago · liveness 79/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/gladia
- Developers building multilingual voice agents where sub-300ms latency decides whether a turn feels natural
- Contact centers needing real-time transcription plus diarization, sentiment, and NER without buying a second vendor
- Meeting assistant teams that want Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams capture handled by the API rather than self-built
- Media and content teams generating subtitles and translations across 100+ languages at batch scale
- Teams that require on-premise or self-hosted deployment — Gladia is API-first with custom hosting reserved for
- English-only projects chasing the absolute lowest WER, where Deepgram is still the benchmark to beat
- Buyers who want a flat monthly subscription — billing runs on a prepaid credit wallet you top up yourself
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Skip Gladia if you want a flat monthly subscription with no wallet to monitor, or if you only need English transcription and are optimizing purely for the lowest raw WER — competitors still edge it there.
Once the one-time €50 signup credit is used up, everything runs on a prepaid wallet you must top up manually or via auto top-up — there is no monthly free reset.
Starter pay-as-you-go runs $0.61/hr async and $0.75/hr real-time, which fits pilot-stage teams and low-volume API users. Growth, which requires an upfront commitment to reach $0.20/hr async and $0.25/hr real-time, undercuts Deepgram and AssemblyAI on effective cost once you include bundled enrichment. Enterprise is custom-priced for unlimited concurrency, zero data retention, and custom hosting. Volume teams should model total spend against AssemblyAI's add-on pricing before committing.
In short
Gladia — Multilingual speech-to-text API with real-time streaming and audio intelligence bundled into one call. Best for Developers building multilingual voice agents where sub-300ms latency decides whether a turn feels natural, Contact centers needing real-time transcription plus diarization, sentiment, and NER without buying a second vendor, Meeting assistant teams that want Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams capture handled by the API rather than self-built. Free to start; paid plans from $0.2.
What's new in Gladia
Checked 4 days agoAcross the latest 5 updates: 1 feature update and 4 launches.
GladiaFlow v1.1.0
GladiaFlow 1.1.0 fixes macOS Option-key dictation shortcuts, remembers Hold vs Toggle mode across restarts, and stops a settings glitch from clearing the API key.
SDK release: JavaScript 2.0.0 and Python 2.0.0
Reliability-focused SDK release: failed real-time session starts now return errors to your app instead of crashing the host process, with cleaner browser teardown and updated live-translation types.
GPT-6 Astra in Audio to LLM
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra is now available in the Audio to LLM pipeline for summarization, action items, and custom analysis — with 400+ models in the catalog and one webhook returning the full pipeline.
Gladia n8n community node
Official @gladiaio/n8n-nodes-gladia node brings speech-to-text, diarization, summaries, translation, SRT/VTT, NER, sentiment, and custom vocabulary onto the n8n canvas for self-hosted workflows.
GladiaFlow: Open-source voice dictation for your desktop
MIT-licensed macOS and Windows dictation app powered by Gladia's real-time STT API — press a hotkey, talk, and text appears in any focused field, with no subscription beyond transcription usage.
What people actually say about Gladia — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
64 mentions across 4 sources (Hacker News, YouTube, Bluesky, Lemmy) · researched Jul 5, 2026.
Average across the 4 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +#1 on STT blind test according to compare-stt.com
- +Sub-300ms real-time streaming with <100ms partials
- +Bundled intelligence features at no extra cost
- +100+ languages with auto-detection and code-switching
- +EU data residency and SOC 2 / HIPAA compliance
- −Hallucinated on tricky audio where competitors stayed silent
- −Solaria-3 initial language coverage is limited to 5 languages
- −Community support is thin outside HN and few Bluesky posts
- −Vendor lock-in concerns for open-source proponents
- −Uncertain pricing impact from OVH acquisition
- • Potential overage charges for high-volume usage not clearly documented
- • AI model enrichment (audio-to-LLM) may incur additional compute costs
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Gladia? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Real-time streaming STT over WebSocket at sub-300ms latency
- Async batch transcription for recordings and long-form audio
- 100+ languages with automatic detection and code-switching
- Solaria-3 model at 9.6% WER on real English audio (EN, FR, DE, ES, IT)
- Solaria-1 universal model for broad language coverage
- Speaker diarization ranked #1 on the pyannoteAI benchmark
- Named entity recognition (people, organizations, dates, emails, addresses)
- PII redaction for sensitive audio and transcripts
- Sentiment analysis with reported 94% confidence
- Summarization, chapterization, and topic extraction
- Translation and subtitle generation (SRT/VTT) from transcripts
- Audio to LLM pipeline with native model or bring-your-own-model (GPT-6 Astra available)
- Custom vocabulary and custom spelling support
- Word-level timestamps and multi-channel audio support
- GladiaFlow open-source desktop dictation (MIT-licensed, macOS and Windows)
About Gladia
Gladia is an audio infrastructure API that turns live streams, uploads, and mic input into transcripts and structured insights through a single endpoint. Rather than chaining a separate STT provider, a diarization service, and an LLM pipeline, you send audio once and get back speaker turns, sentiment, named entities, summaries, and translations. The Solaria-3 model posts a 9.6% word error rate on real English audio with strongest results across English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian; Solaria-1 is positioned as the universal model for languages outside that core set. Real-time streaming over WebSocket runs at sub-300ms latency, async batch handles long-form recordings, and 100+ languages are supported with automatic detection and code-switching. Gladia ranks #1 for speaker detection on the pyannoteAI benchmark, and Audio Intelligence features ship included rather than as metered add-ons. The platform reports 2B+ minutes transcribed and 300K+ developers, with an Audio to LLM pipeline now supporting GPT-6 Astra for summarization and custom analysis in a single webhook response. It is built for developers shipping voice agents, contact-center QA, and meeting assistants who need one API instead of a stitched-together stack.
Behind the Verdict
Gladia's core pitch is consolidation: one API for capture, transcription, and enrichment instead of three vendors and a glue layer. That matters most when you are shipping into multiple markets. The Solaria-3 model at 9.6% WER on real English audio is competitive, and the #1 ranking for speaker detection on the pyannoteAI benchmark is a concrete, checkable claim. Solaria-1 covers the long tail of languages outside the EN/FR/DE/ES/IT core. Where Gladia earns its keep is in the enrichment layer. Diarization, named entity recognition, PII redaction, sentiment, summarization, chapterization, translation, and subtitle generation are part of the base price rather than upsold modules. If your product needs any two of those, the effective cost advantage over chaining separate services is real. The Audio to LLM pipeline supports both a native model and bring-your-own-model, with GPT-6 Astra now available for summarization and custom analysis in a single webhook response. Plumbing is developer-first. WebSocket streaming, REST upload, Python and Node.js SDKs (both at 2.0.0 as of September 2026), and native meeting-bot integrations for Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. Integrations run through Pipecat, LiveKit, Vapi, Recall, Meeting BaaS, Attendee, Twilio, VideoSDK, Composio, Zapier, Make, and n8n — the voice-agent stack is well covered. GladiaFlow, an MIT-licensed desktop dictation app, extends the platform to no-code users who want hotkey dictation in any application. Weaknesses are mostly operational. Billing runs on a prepaid credit wallet you top up manually or via auto top-up; the €50 signup credit is one-time and does not reset monthly. That means ongoing cost management is your job, not a flat subscription line item. Concurrency is capped by tier (30 real-time and 25 async on Starter), so high-volume launches need a plan upgrade. On-prem and self-hosted deployment are not offered outside Enterprise's custom hosting option. Gladia is API-first, with desktop use only through the open-source GladiaFlow app. Where it fits: multilingual voice agents where sub-300ms latency decides whether a turn feels natural; contact centers needing real-time transcription plus diarization and sentiment without a second vendor; meeting assistant teams capturing Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams; and European products that need EU data residency alongside an enterprise compliance posture. Where it does not fit: English-only projects chasing the lowest possible WER might still prefer Deepgram, and hobby projects that cannot absorb per-hour costs once the trial credit runs out should look elsewhere.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Gladia actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You wire WebSocket streaming from Twilio into Gladia's real-time STT endpoint at sub-300ms latency, then pass the transcript through Audio to LLM with GPT-6 Astra for turn-by-turn intent detection.
Outcome: Natural conversational turns without a separate STT vendor, and one webhook delivers the transcript plus the LLM analysis.
You connect Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams call recordings via native meeting-bot integration, then run async batch transcription with diarization, sentiment, and named entity recognition on each file.
Outcome: Agent QA and compliance review get speaker turns, sentiment scores, and PII redaction from a single API call — no second vendor for enrichment.
You upload multilingual video files through the REST endpoint and request transcription plus translation and SRT/VTT subtitle generation in the same job.
Outcome: Subtitles and translations ship together across 100+ languages without a separate localization step, and no manual sync between tools.
Use Cases
- Transcribe live customer support calls in real time for agent assist and compliance monitoring.
- Generate meeting summaries and action items from Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams recordings.
- Automatically subtitle and translate multilingual videos for media production and localization.
- Redact PII from sensitive call recordings before storage or analysis.
- Analyze sentiment and named entities in sales calls to surface key topics and customer mood.
- Build voice-based AI agents with low-latency transcription for interactive voice response systems.
- Dictate emails, Slack messages, or commit messages with the GladiaFlow desktop app.
- Run batch transcription of long-form call archives for contact-center QA.
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-09-22
Limitations
- Gladia is API-first; the only desktop-surface option is the open-source GladiaFlow app.
- The free entry is a one-time €50 credit with no monthly reset, and billing runs on a prepaid credit wallet that requires you to monitor balance or enable auto top-up.
- Concurrency is tier-capped (30 real-time and 25 async on Starter), and moving past those limits means upgrading to Growth or Enterprise.
- On-prem and self-hosted deployment are not offered outside Enterprise's custom hosting option.
- Competitors still edge Gladia on raw English-only WER and on breadth of ecosystem tooling, so English-only projects should benchmark directly before switching.
as of 2026-10-04
Verification history
We have re-verified Gladia 9 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 9 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Gladia tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Starter
$0.61/hr async · $0.75/hr real-time
Ideal for
Solo developers and small teams running a pilot or low-volume integration who want pay-as-you-go with no commitment.
What this tier adds
Starting tier — €50 one-time credit, then $0.61/hr async and $0.75/hr real-time with 30 real-time and 25 async concurrent requests.
Growth
Async as low as $0.20/hr · Real-time as low as $0.25/hr (req
Ideal for
Fast-growing teams with steady audio volume who can commit upfront to lower per-hour rates and need an uptime SLA.
What this tier adds
Adds automatic model-training opt-out, priority processing queue, flexible concurrency, and a 99.9% uptime SLA — unit pricing drops to $0.20/hr async and $0.25/hr real-time with an upfront commitment.
Enterprise
Custom
Ideal for
Enterprises with regulatory requirements, high concurrency needs, or custom model and hosting requirements.
What this tier adds
Adds unlimited concurrent requests, default model-training opt-out, zero data retention, custom hosting, custom models, and premium support with a dedicated Slack channel and Account Manager.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Gladia's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Starter pay-as-you-go runs $0.61/hr async and $0.75/hr real-time, which fits pilot-stage teams and low-volume API users. Growth, which requires an upfront commitment to reach $0.20/hr async and $0.25/hr real-time, undercuts Deepgram and AssemblyAI on effective cost once you include bundled enrichment. Enterprise is custom-priced for unlimited concurrency, zero data retention, and custom hosting. Volume teams should model total spend against AssemblyAI's add-on pricing before committing.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Gladia — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Developers typically get a first transcript within 15-30 minutes using the Python or Node.js SDK — sign up for the €50 credit, grab an API key, and hit the async or real-time quickstart. Voice-agent integration into Pipecat, LiveKit, or Vapi takes a few hours to wire end to end. GladiaFlow desktop dictation is plug-and-play: install, paste your API key, hold the hotkey. No-code n8n users need
Switching to or from Gladia
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Deepgram: Gladia publishes a migration guide in its docs and the SDK shape maps closely — swap the client, reuse your audio pipeline, add Audio Intelligence features natively.
- →From AssemblyAI: Gladia's docs include a dedicated AssemblyAI migration page; the async transcription and webhook flows translate directly.
- →From a self-built Whisper pipeline: replace the inference server with a Gladia REST or WebSocket call and use the included diarization and NER instead of post-processing scripts.
- →From a bundled meeting-recorder vendor: Gladia's Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams meeting-bot integrations plus CRM push replace recording, transcription, and enrichment in one API.
- ↗To Deepgram: swap the streaming client and re-request diarization and NER, which Deepgram prices separately from base transcription.
- ↗To AssemblyAI: port the async webhook flow; LeMUR replaces Audio to LLM and sits on top of its own transcription pricing.
- ↗To self-hosted Whisper with pyannote: you own the inference cost and the ops overhead of running diarization and enrichment services yourself.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Gladia”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Gladia” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Gladia.
Official links
Tools that pair well with Gladia
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Gladia, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
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Notta
Notta is an AI note taker that transcribes 58 languages, then turns recordings into slides, infographics, and searchable notes.
RapidSOS
RapidSOS pipes AI-assisted emergency intelligence and pre-call device data straight into 911 dispatch.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Gladia vs Spider Cloud
Spider Cloud and Gladia serve completely different domains: Spider Cloud extracts structured web data for AI agents and RAG, while Gladia transcribes and enriches audio. Choose Spider Cloud if your AI needs live web content; choose Gladia if you're building voice products. Both offer freemium entry with competitive pay-as-you-go pricing, but their feature sets don't overlap. No direct competition.
Gladia vs Temporal Ai
Temporal and Gladia serve fundamentally different needs: Temporal is for orchestrating durable, crash-proof workflows and AI agents, while Gladia is for high-speed, multilingual audio transcription and intelligence. Choose Temporal if you need to build reliable, long-running workflows with automatic retries and state recovery; choose Gladia if you need sub-300ms real-time transcription with speaker diarization and audio insights. They can be complementary—Temporal could orchestrate Gladia calls for transcription workflows.
Gladia vs Voyage Ai
Choose Voyage AI if your priority is high-accuracy retrieval on domain-specific documents (finance, legal, code) with long-context embeddings and cost-efficient vector storage. Choose Gladia if you need real-time, low-latency transcription across 100+ languages for voice products, meetings, or contact centers. Gladia's freemium model suits smaller teams, while Voyage AI requires custom enterprise pricing.
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Krisp Voice AI
Real-time noise cancellation, accent conversion and AI meeting notes in one app
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