# Gemini-3.5-Transcribe

10 Hacker News commenters recommended Gemini-3.5-Transcribe and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for high transcription accuracy and good formatting, with latency that is still a bit slow. Critics note it can simplify precise wording and cut off the start of audio.

## Why people recommend it

- Top accuracy among models (2 comments): "it beats every other model on accuracy, but it definitely needs a bit more work on latency" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49474353)) "it's the best model in terms of accuracy, latency, and formatting I have ever used" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49471462))
- Low latency (2 comments): "it's the best model in terms of accuracy, latency, and formatting I have ever used" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49471462)) "For me, Gemini-3.5-Transcribe actually has slightly lower latency." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49474492))
- Impressive in everyday use (2 comments): "Very impressive, including the ability to hit fn in any text field and say "generate an image ..."." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49472054)) "It works great in this scenario." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49472275))

## What people warn about

- Latency needs more work (2 comments): "it beats every other model on accuracy, but it definitely needs a bit more work on latency" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49474353)) "It doesn't reach the frontier in either latency or accuracy for ai multilingual conversations." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49473626))
- Weak multilingual output (2 comments): "It doesn't reach the frontier in either latency or accuracy for ai multilingual conversations." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49473626)) "It produced Russian or Ukrainian as output." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49487298))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [OpenAI Whisper](https://hackerapproved.com/p/whisper.md): 164 recommend
- [NVIDIA Parakeet](https://hackerapproved.com/p/parakeet.md): 144 recommend
- [Mistral Voxtral](https://hackerapproved.com/p/voxtral-transcribe-2.md): 69 recommend
- [Moonshine open-weights STT models](https://hackerapproved.com/p/moonshine.md): 37 recommend
- [whisper.cpp](https://hackerapproved.com/p/whisper-cpp.md): 33 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Gemini-3.5-Transcribe", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gemini-3-5-transcribe/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).