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AssemblyAI vs IBM Watson Speech To Text comparison

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Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AssemblyAI
Ranking in Speech-To-Text Services
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Watson Speech To Text
Ranking in Speech-To-Text Services
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Speech-To-Text Services category, the mindshare of AssemblyAI is 6.7%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson Speech To Text is 4.5%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Speech-To-Text Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AssemblyAI6.7%
IBM Watson Speech To Text4.5%
Other88.8%
Speech-To-Text Services
 

Featured Reviews

Leen Batta - PeerSpot reviewer
Full Stack Developer at a university with 10,001+ employees
Automated workflows have transformed classroom videos into instant interactive study content
While AssemblyAI performs exceptionally well, there are a few areas where the developer experience could be further improved. First, regarding native video file support, currently, developers must write custom back-end logic to extract the audio track from video files locally before uploading. If AssemblyAI supported direct native video uploads and handled the audio extraction internally on their servers, it would simplify our back-end architecture. Native real-time status updates could also be improved because while the API is highly stable, writing custom asynchronous polling loops to check transcription status adds boilerplate code. Lastly, the queue latency for micro-files could be optimized because we noticed some initial queue or warm-up latency when transcribing very short audio files under one minute.
it_user964722 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Transformation and Automation Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Easy to understand, configure, and use
I would recommend it. IBM has several other solutions that can connect to it, so no need to buy different pieces from several providers. If you want to find a good solution for the customer and put some translation tool or machine learning for text understanding and so on, you can get this from IBM. It can be a one-stop shop for a good solution. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. It has good quality, and it's easy to work with.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What stood out to me about the speech-to-text feature of AssemblyAI was the speed, accuracy, and ease of integration."
"AssemblyAI has positively impacted my organization because our users started using the chatbot much more from the moment we implemented AssemblyAI in the streaming tool, and usage increased by 300%."
"AssemblyAI has positively impacted my organization because by using it, both our story narrators and story readers benefit greatly."
"The primary benefit I receive from their product is much more accurate transcription; first, it is a very affordable service, and second, the accuracy is much better compared to other services such as Deepgram or AWS transcription services, which are the main benefits."
"AssemblyAI has positively impacted my organization by being very helpful for audio transcription, saving time, and helping me find meeting notes."
"Using AssemblyAI ensured the transcript was highly accurate, meaning that the final educational tools generated by our LLM were of professional academic quality."
"AssemblyAI has positively impacted my organization as it is in our active pipeline, making it one of the core building blocks of our product that we are currently making."
"AssemblyAI can make work really easier and faster, because why would I wish to spend more than four to five hours on a single one-hour transcript if with AssemblyAI I can do it within forty minutes?"
"It was easy to understand, easy to configure, and easy to use."
"IBM has several other solutions that can connect to it, so no need to buy different pieces from several providers."
 

Cons

"AssemblyAI needs to be more accurate, particularly with regard to spelling."
"AssemblyAI could improve their free tier."
"The only point where I think AssemblyAI can be improved is in the export functionality."
"I wish AssemblyAI could improve its multilingual support, as it did not work well when I spoke in different languages."
"One aspect where AssemblyAI can improve is the efficiency for Indian languages, as we have seen a lack of accuracy."
"I think the documentation could be improved a bit because it is a little difficult to follow for the first-time user."
"One area where AssemblyAI can be improved is in summarization."
"AssemblyAI should definitely cater to multiple different languages of the world as well as in India."
"The quality needs to be updated. For speech to text, support for additional languages can be included. For example, support for the large markets in Eastern Europe, such as Polish or Romanian, would be nice."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
35%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Wholesaler/Distributor
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AssemblyAI?
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I would like to know if it can be reduced somehow, but apart from that, licensing is good enough for us.
What needs improvement with AssemblyAI?
AssemblyAI can be improved in several areas. I don't remember if AssemblyAI had a webhook, but if they have one, that's beneficial. The biggest improvement I think was the lack of background sound....
What is your primary use case for AssemblyAI?
My main use case for AssemblyAI was for a voice-based calling system that we created. A specific example of how I used AssemblyAI in my voice-based calling system is that it was used for the text-t...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
American Airlines, UBank, Bitly, Eurobits
Find out what your peers are saying about Deepgram, AssemblyAI, Microsoft and others in Speech-To-Text Services. Updated: August 2026.
911,493 professionals have used our research since 2012.