# Soniox

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Soniox and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend Soniox for accurate transcription that beats rivals like Deepgram, with quick setup and lower prices than many competitors. The recurring caveat is that it is a bit expensive.

## Why people recommend it

- Top accuracy among speech models (5 comments): "At the moment, Soniox STT v5 is definitely the best, and I'm impressed by its performance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49474353)) "the best I have found while testing models for my language learning app" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47592240)) "It really does do way better than Deepgram and others." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47227376))
- Dedicated speech model, not general-purpose (2 comments): "Dedicated audio models from vendors like ElevenLabs or Soniox use speaker detection models to produce an accurate speaker based transcript" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969520)) "Now try an actual speech model like ElevenLabs or Soniox, not something not made for it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45976893))
- Cheaper than comparable speech models (2 comments): "I wonder how they get state of the art for such low prices over the competition." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47227379)) "Yes, Soniox is much cheaper." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49474492))

## What people warn about

- A bit expensive (1 comments): "A bit expensive, but reliable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48675773))

## 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

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://soniox.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Soniox", https://hackerapproved.com/p/soniox/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).