Soniox
Shares rank 15 of 25 speech recognition models by recommenders
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.
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.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Top accuracy among speech models
“At the moment, Soniox STT v5 is definitely the best, and I'm impressed by its performance.”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “Gemini-3.5-Transcribe” “the best I have found while testing models for my language learning app”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Cohere Transcribe: Speech Recognition” “It really does do way better than Deepgram and others.”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: I built a sub-500ms latency voice agent from scratch” - Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Why Audio Is the One Area Small Labs Are Winning”
- Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “Gemini-3.5-Transcribe”
Dedicated speech model, not general-purpose
“Dedicated audio models from vendors like ElevenLabs or Soniox use speaker detection models to produce an accurate speaker based transcript”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Gemini 3” “Now try an actual speech model like ElevenLabs or Soniox, not something not made for it.”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Gemini 3” Cheaper than comparable speech models
“I wonder how they get state of the art for such low prices over the competition.”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: I built a sub-500ms latency voice agent from scratch” “Yes, Soniox is much cheaper.”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “Gemini-3.5-Transcribe”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
A bit expensive
“A bit expensive, but reliable.”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Turn native language audio into flashcards and shadowing practice”
Other speech recognition models people recommend
The four most recommended other speech recognition models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI Whisper | 164 | 53 | 76% | 12 | — | Approved |
| NVIDIA Parakeet | 144 | 27 | 84% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Mistral Voxtral | 69 | 27 | 72% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Moonshine open-weights STT models | 37 | 13 | 74% | 7 | — | Approved |
| SonioxThis page | 9 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
13 of the 14 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“took minutes to get started”
“Soniox came out really good.”
“Yes, Soniox is much cheaper.”
“At the moment, Soniox STT v5 is definitely the best, and I'm impressed by its performance.”
“others do it very well, like Soniox and Deepgram”
“A bit expensive, but reliable.”
“the best I have found while testing models for my language learning app”
“I wonder how they get state of the art for such low prices over the competition.”
“It really does do way better than Deepgram and others.”
“This always works better than VAD.”
“they are on the Pareto frontier”
“Now try an actual speech model like ElevenLabs or Soniox, not something not made for it.”
“Dedicated audio models from vendors like ElevenLabs or Soniox use speaker detection models to produce an accurate speaker based transcript”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.