2 models compared on the same benchmark — accuracy, latency, price, language coverage and capabilities. Whisper Large V3 Turbo leads on raw accuracy; Universal Streaming is fastest; Whisper Large V3 Turbo covers the most languages; Whisper Large V3 Turbo is cheapest.
Verdict · who wins what
Most accurate
Whisper Large V3 Turbo
14.3% WER
Groq
Fastest
Universal Streaming
0.1× realtime
AssemblyAI
Most languages
Whisper Large V3 Turbo
12 languages
Groq
Cheapest
Whisper Large V3 Turbo
$0.0007/min
Groq
Comparing
2 models · same benchmark
1
Universal Streaming
AssemblyAI
Purpose-built for real-time voice agents — ~300ms immutable transcripts
2
Whisper Large V3 Turbo
Groq
OpenAI Whisper large-v3-turbo served on Groq's LPU hardware — very fast, very low cost batch transcription with word-level timestamps and automatic language detection.
general
—
legal
—
medical
—
noisy
—
technical
—
uk
—
us
—
—
3.4s
Final drain
806ms
—
Real-time factor
1.03×
—
Flicker
3.9%
—
Cadence
2.7/s
—
$3.96
1,000 hours
$151.20
$39.60
No
Auto-detect language
No
Yes
Live / streaming
Yes
No
Custom vocabulary
No
No
Max file size
5 GB
100 MB
Max duration
10 h
No limit
Compliance
—
Is Universal Streaming or Whisper Large V3 Turbo more accurate?
Whisper Large V3 Turbo has a published benchmark at 14.3% word error rate. Universal Streaming has not been benchmarked yet.
Which is cheaper, Universal Streaming or Whisper Large V3 Turbo?
Whisper Large V3 Turbo is cheaper at $0.0007/min versus $0.0025/min for Universal Streaming.
Should you choose Universal Streaming or Whisper Large V3 Turbo?
Choose Universal Streaming for speed; choose Whisper Large V3 Turbo for accuracy, lower cost, and language coverage.
