| Solution | Transcription Speed (1hr audio) | Cost/hr | Hungarian Quality | Speaker Diarization | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MacBook Air (local) | ~45-60 min | Free | Good | Needs separate model (pyannote) | Slow, pyannote adds ~20-30 min extra per hour |
| OpenAI Whisper API | ~1-3 min | $0.36 | Good | ❌ Not supported | Need to combine with separate diarization |
| Whisper + pyannote | ~5-10 min (GPU) | Free | Good | ✅ Yes (local) | Best free option, needs GPU + HuggingFace token |
| Deepgram | ~30-60 sec | $0.25 | Decent | ✅ Built-in | Fast, easy API, HU quality not the best |
| Google Speech-to-Text | ~1-2 min | $1.44 | Good | ✅ Built-in | Good HU support, expensive |
| Azure Speech | ~1-2 min | $1.00 | Good | ✅ Built-in | Good quality, mid-price |
| Amazon Transcribe | ~2-5 min | $0.72 | Decent | ✅ Built-in | HU supported, decent quality, nice S3 integration |
For 100 hours of audio:
| Solution | Total Time | Total Cost | Has Diarization | Recommended? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MacBook Air (local) | 5-7 days | $0 | Only if budget is zero | |
| Whisper API only | 2-5 hours | $36 | ❌ | Not if you need speakers |
| Whisper + pyannote | 8-16 hours | $0 | ✅ | Best free option, needs decent GPU |
| Deepgram | 1-2 hours | $25 | ✅ | Cheapest managed with diarization |
| Amazon Transcribe | 3-8 hours | $72 | ✅ | Good if already on AWS |
| Azure Speech | 2-3 hours | $100 | ✅ | Good quality, mid-price |
| Google STT | 2-3 hours | $144 | ✅ | Best quality, most expensive |