ElevenLabsElevenLabs Speech-to-Text
Speech-to-text with diarization, word-level timestamps, audio event tags, entity detection (PII, PHI, PCI), and keyterm boosting up to 100 terms.
ElevenLabs Speech-to-Text adds the features that Whisper users bolt on after the fact: diarization, word or character timestamps, audio event tagging, entity detection (PII, PHI, PCI, offensive language), and keyterm boosting up to 100 terms. Built for transcripts you can ship without post-processing.
What it is good at
Meeting notes
Diarization for who-spoke-when on recorded calls.
Podcast transcripts
Word-level timing for scroll highlighting and search.
Compliance review
PHI or PCI entity_detection flags sensitive spans automatically.
Legal and medical
Entity detection plus keyterm boosting for domain vocabulary.
Caption exports
Word timestamps for short-form video subtitles.
Research corpora
Field recordings transcribed with domain keyterms.
Why ElevenLabs STT over Whisper
Head to head
Compared to OpenAI Whisper
- Diarization built in (no separate diarizer needed).
- Audio event tagging in the same pass.
- Entity detection (PII, PHI, PCI, offensive) without post-processing.
- Up to 100 keyterm boosts for domain vocabulary.
- Word or character timestamp granularity.
FAQs
People also ask
Upload audio through Unifically. The job returns text with optional diarization, timestamps, audio event tags, entity spans, and boosted vocabulary.
When tag_audio_events is enabled, non-speech sounds appear as inline cues such as (laughter) or (music) in the transcript.
The UI accepts comma-separated terms. The payload sends up to 100 trimmed strings to bias recognition for product names and technical words.
Both transcribe well. ElevenLabs adds first-class diarization, audio event tagging, and entity detection (PII, PHI, PCI) without separate post-processing. Whisper is open and free locally but requires bolt-on tools for those features.
All, PII, PHI, PCI, offensive language, or none. Pick PHI for HIPAA-adjacent workflows. Pick PCI for payment-card spans. Pick all for general redaction.