Frequently Asked Questions
What is speech-to-text?
Speech-to-text is software that listens to spoken language and writes it out as text. It uses an acoustic model to map sounds to words and a language model to make the result read naturally. The same core technology runs phone dictation, live captions, voice assistants, and the transcription features built into meeting and video apps.
What is the difference between speech-to-text, transcription, and speech recognition?
Speech-to-text is the broad technology that turns speech into text. Transcription is one application of it: producing a written record of a recording or meeting. Speech recognition is the engine's ability to identify spoken words in the first place, which also enables dictation and voice commands. They describe the same field at different levels.
How accurate is speech-to-text technology?
Modern speech-to-text reaches around 90 to 95 percent accuracy on clean audio in a well-supported language. Performance is measured by word error rate, and it falls with noise, accents, overlapping speakers, or specialized vocabulary. Models tuned for a specific domain, like medicine or law, beat general engines on that field's terminology.
Can speech-to-text work in real time?
Yes, real-time speech-to-text transcribes as you speak, with results appearing within a second or two. It powers live captions, dictation, and voice assistants. Real-time mode trades a little accuracy for speed, so batch transcription of an uploaded file, where the model can process the whole recording, is usually slightly more precise.
Is speech-to-text free?
Many speech-to-text tools offer a free tier covering a set number of minutes per month, then charge by usage beyond that. Developer APIs bill per minute or per hour of audio, often a few cents a minute. Open models from sources like Hugging Face are free to run yourself if you have the hardware.