Gladia: French speech-to-text API for 100+ languages, run by default on a European cloud provider in France. These 5 tools cover the same task (speech APIs). They are ranked by how many of Gladia's strongest markets they share, then by how complete their profile is.
Can store customer data in the EU, headquartered in United Kingdom.
Picked from our profile data, which we check against vendor pages. No vendor paid for a placement.
What Gladia does
Gladia is a speech-to-text API for meeting assistants, contact center software and voice agents. It transcribes recorded and live audio in more than 100 languages and enriches the transcript for downstream systems.
Transcription of recordings and live audio in 100+ languages with automatic language detection
Speaker diarization and word-level timestamps
Transcript enrichment pushed to a CRM or database via webhooks
Gladia operates as the French company Gladia SAS and runs the service by default on a European cloud provider in France. Starting price: from $0.61 usage-based.
Before you switch: Check the training setting for your plan: on Starter, model training is not switched off by default, while Growth and Enterprise opt out. Ask where your data will be hosted if you need a region outside France, and request the data processing terms. The security page lists SOC 2 Type II and says ISO 27001 is in progress.
Deepgram is a developer platform for speech to text, text to speech and voice agents. Product and engineering teams use it to add transcription or spoken conversations to apps, contact centers and meeting tools, paying per minute or per character.
Key functions
Nova-3 transcribes streams and files, multilingual including English, German, Spanish and Hindi
Aura and Flux generate speech with latency from 80 ms according to the vendor
Voice Agent API combines speech recognition, a language model and speech output in one call
Compared with Gladia
Starts lower: from $0.00 usage-based, Gladia from $0.61 usage-based.
Strongest elsewhere: United States.
Check before buying: Deepgram processes data in the US by default. A dedicated EU endpoint keeps processing within the EU, and self-hosting is a further option, so review the DPA and transfer terms for the setup you choose. Recording and transcribing calls requires notice or consent under state wiretap laws such as California's two-party consent rule. Costs scale with minutes and characters; model concurrency and volume before committing to Growth.
Sarvam AI provides APIs and models for translation, speech recognition and speech synthesis in Indian languages, for companies and public bodies that serve customers across India.
Key functions
Bulbul v3 speaks 10 Indian languages and English with more than 30 voices
Saaras recognizes speech in 22 Indian languages and English, with speaker diarization in batch mode
Translation and transliteration for 23 languages
Compared with Gladia
States no EU hosting option; Gladia has one.
Strongest elsewhere: India.
Check before buying: Costs grow with usage, so estimate characters and audio hours per month before integrating. Data is processed in India, which suits companies subject to India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act; for EU personal data, check transfer rules and ask for a data processing agreement.
Speechmatics is a British speech recognition API that turns live or recorded speech into text in more than 55 languages. Product and data teams build it into meeting tools, contact center analytics, captioning and voice agents.
Key functions
Realtime and batch transcription in more than 55 languages, including code-switching within a sentence
Speaker diarization and custom vocabulary included
Dedicated model for medical terminology
Compared with Gladia
Has a free plan; Gladia does not.
Starts lower: from $0.13 usage-based, Gladia from $0.61 usage-based.
Strongest elsewhere: United Kingdom.
Check before buying: Choose the regional endpoint deliberately: batch jobs stay in the region of the endpoint you call, and besides the EU, US and Australian realtime endpoints there is a global one. The vendor states that data is not logged as standard, that realtime audio is not stored and that batch data is deleted after seven days unless you opt in to its training discount programme. It lists ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA. Costs grow with audio hours, so estimate volume and concurrency limits. Medical transcripts are health data under GDPR Article 9.
ReadSpeaker provides neural text to speech for organizations that want their websites, documents, learning content, apps or devices to read aloud. It also builds custom brand voices and can run in the cloud, on premises or fully offline.
Key functions
Neural voices in more than 90 languages, over 300 voices according to the vendor
Custom Voice trains a dedicated brand voice from less than three hours of studio recordings
webReader and docReader read web pages and documents aloud in real time
Compared with Gladia
Strongest elsewhere: Sweden.
Check before buying: ReadSpeaker is ISO/IEC 27001 certified and names the Swedish data protection authority as lead supervisor, but personal data may be processed outside the EEA under standard contractual clauses. Ask which hosting location applies to your product, or choose on-premises or embedded deployment. Pricing depends on page views, enrollment or speech volume and is quoted individually. For Custom Voice, clarify rights to the voice model and the voice talent's contract.
Whisper is OpenAI's open source speech recognition model and Python package. Teams with technical staff run it on their own hardware to transcribe recordings in many languages, translate speech into English and detect the spoken language.
Key functions
Multilingual speech recognition from audio files
Translation of spoken language into English
Automatic identification of the spoken language
Compared with Gladia
Has a free plan; Gladia does not.
Strongest elsewhere: United States.
Check before buying: Whisper is a code repository, not a managed service: your IT team installs, secures and updates it, and larger models need a GPU. There is no vendor support, SLA or data processing agreement, but data stays wherever you run it. Accuracy varies widely by language according to the README, so test with your own recordings. The MIT license permits commercial use.
All 5 alternatives by buying criteria
Gladia alternatives by price, trial, hosting and security
Not stated means we found no statement on the vendor's site. Data as of each profile's last check.
The market around Gladia: 6 tools for this task
67 % Publish a price (4/6)
33 % Free plan (2/6)
50 % Free trial (3/6)
50 % EU hosting option (3/6)
50 % Headquartered in Europe (3/6)
0 % Single sign-on (0/6)
Gladia is among the tools that publish a price and offers EU hosting. More than half of the vendors here publish prices, so you can compare list prices before the first demo.
Source: ai-toolfinder.com dataset, full profiles only.
It depends on your country and company size. In our data, Deepgram, Sarvam AI and Speechmatics share the most strong markets with Gladia, so they are the closest fit if you work where Gladia is strong. Filter the list by country and size to narrow it down.
Is there a free alternative to Gladia?
Deepgram, Sarvam AI, Speechmatics and Whisper offer a free plan or a free trial according to the vendors. Check the limits of free plans before you rely on them for employee data.
Which Gladia alternatives can host data in the EU?
Deepgram and Speechmatics can store customer data in the EU, according to the vendors. Ask for the data processing agreement (Art. 28 GDPR) and the list of subprocessors.
Which Gladia alternatives publish their prices?
Deepgram, Sarvam AI and Speechmatics show prices on their websites, for example Deepgram from $0.00 usage-based and Sarvam AI from 2 INR usage-based. The others quote after a demo.
Are there European alternatives to Gladia?
Speechmatics and ReadSpeaker are headquartered in Europe. A European seat does not guarantee EU hosting, so check the data processing agreement and the list of subprocessors.
Deepgram
