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Amazon Transcribe alternatives: Azure, Google Cloud and open source

Transcribe turns speech into text, and says when each word was said.

The timings matter more than the words. They are what lets you cut video, or jump to a moment in a recording.

  • From my own projects
  • Sources linked
  • Updated September 2026

The same job on four platforms

The same task, a different bill and a different console. The layer does not change.

AWS

Amazon Transcribe[1]

Transcribe turns speech into text, and says when each word was said.

AWS documentation →[2]

Microsoft Azure

Azure AI Speech[3]

Official documentation →

Google Cloud

Speech-to-Text[4]

Official documentation →

Open source / run it yourself

Whisper[5]

Open weights from OpenAI, MIT licence. Runs on your own machine or GPU.

What Amazon Transcribe does

You sendAn audio file, or a live stream
Amazon Transcribe

Transcribe turns speech into text, and says when each word was said.

You get backA transcript with word-level timings
What it costsPer second of audio. Custom vocabulary costs nothing extra and is the most useful thing you can add.
Who operates itAWS. The custom vocabulary is yours, the runtime is not.
When it is the wrong choiceWhen you need the meaning rather than the words.

AWS calls it: “Automatically convert speech to text and gain insights”[1]

How I use it

In my video pipeline it writes the transcript behind the subtitles, for about 11 cents a clip. I use custom vocabularies so names and product terms come out right.

How I built an AI film crew on AWS →All AWS services in my projects →
Linda Mohamed

Linda Mohamed, AI and cloud consultant and AWS Community Hero in Vienna. I build these pipelines for clients and teach them at FH Burgenland.

Read more on ai-solutions.wiki

My open knowledge base, with longer comparisons and more sources.

Questions

What is the Azure equivalent of Amazon Transcribe?

Azure AI Speech.

What is the Google Cloud equivalent of Amazon Transcribe?

Speech-to-Text.

What is the open-source alternative to Amazon Transcribe?

Whisper: Open weights from OpenAI, MIT licence. Runs on your own machine or GPU.

How is Amazon Transcribe billed?

Per second of audio. Custom vocabulary costs nothing extra and is the most useful thing you can add.

When should you not use Amazon Transcribe?

When you need the meaning rather than the words.

Sources

  1. Amazon Transcribe product page. https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/
  2. Amazon Transcribe documentation. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/transcribe/latest/dg/what-is.html
  3. Azure AI Speech documentation. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/speech-service/overview
  4. Speech-to-Text documentation. https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs
  5. Whisper. https://github.com/openai/whisper
  6. Amazon Transcribe: Speech-to-Text for Enterprise, ai-solutions.wiki. https://ai-solutions.wiki/tools/amazon-transcribe/
  7. Azure Speech Services: Speech-to-Text, Text-to-Speech, and Translation, ai-solutions.wiki. https://ai-solutions.wiki/tools/azure-speech-services/
  8. OpenAI Whisper: Open-Source Speech Recognition, ai-solutions.wiki. https://ai-solutions.wiki/tools/whisper/
  9. AWS AI Services vs Azure AI, ai-solutions.wiki. https://ai-solutions.wiki/comparisons/aws-vs-azure-ai/
  10. Linda Mohamed, course slides “The projects”, MASE-3, FH Burgenland, September 2026.

Links checked September 2026. Product names and availability change: check the linked pages before you decide.

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