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https://www.speechmatics.com/Speechmatics is a speech-to-text API, built for engineering teams that embed transcription in their own products: media platforms, contact centres, meeting tools and voice agents. It is not a meeting-notes app. What makes it stand out for the Arab world is that its documentation names Modern Standard Arabic plus Gulf, Egyptian and Levantine speech, and it offers a pack for Arabic and English in the same recording. With $100 of free credit and no card required, it is well worth a test.
What you get
Speechmatics transcribes recorded files and live streams, and the company says it covers 55+ languages. Every model includes speaker diarization, custom vocabulary, smart formatting, word-level timings, language hints, voice activity detection and turn detection at no extra charge. There is also text-to-speech, with the first million characters free. Cloud processing runs in the EU, the US or Australia, your choice, and audio is not logged for model training by default. On-premises containers, virtual appliances and on-device transcription, the setup Adobe uses in Premiere, are Enterprise-only.
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Pricing is per hour of audio and depends on the model and on whether the audio is recorded or live:
| Model | Best for | Pre-recorded | Real-time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melia 1 (new) | 56 languages without choosing one first; switches mid-sentence | $0.12 | $0.20 |
| Enhanced | Highest accuracy; you pick the language | $0.38 | $0.40 |
| Standard | Enhanced features at lower accuracy | $0.23 | $0.23 |
| Oak 1 | Medical audio: drugs, dosages, procedures | $0.15 | $0.23 |
| Linden 1 | Voice agents, real-time only | n/a | $0.15 (shown reduced from $0.20) |
Extras add up: translation costs $0.49 an hour, chapters $0.30, topics $0.15, and summaries or sentiment $0.09 each. The free tier allows two concurrent real-time sessions and pauses once the credit runs out; after that you buy credit packs from $25 with no commitment or subscribe monthly, with volume discounts of up to 25%. An opt-in programme cuts speech-to-text rates by 33% if you let Speechmatics use your audio and transcripts to improve its models, a trade that deserves a second thought when recordings contain customer data. One oddity: the pricing page title says “from $0.24/hr” while the body lists $0.12; we went with the body.
Arabic: what is documented
The language docs describe “Global Arabic” (code ar) as covering Modern Standard Arabic and Arabic spoken in the Gulf, Egypt and the Levant. Maghrebi dialects are not named, so do not assume the same accuracy for Moroccan, Algerian or Tunisian speech. The ar_en bilingual pack on Enhanced and Standard handles speakers who move between Arabic and English, which is how many business meetings and talk shows in the region actually sound. Melia 1 and Oak 1 switch into Arabic automatically but do not accept the bilingual pack or translation. Arabic is also available on the Oak 1 medical model, which is rare.
There is no neutral Arabic benchmark, so use the free credit: transcribe one recording in your own dialect and one mixed Arabic-English meeting, once on Enhanced with ar_en and once on Melia 1, and compare names, numbers and English terms. Note too that data-processing regions do not include the Middle East, which matters for organisations that must keep data in the region.
Who should look elsewhere
If you simply want your meetings or interviews transcribed, a finished app such as Notta or Sonix will serve you better. Teams building a complete phone agent may prefer Retell AI, which bundles transcription, voice and telephony. For developers who need high-volume Arabic transcription at a transparent per-hour price, Speechmatics belongs on the shortlist.
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