ElevenLabs built its reputation in voice synthesis- voices that sound human, expressive, emotionally nuanced. Scribe, their speech-to-text product, carries forward that same ambition: deliver transcription that feels effortlessly high-quality, multilingual, and accessible to developers who want a single tool that “just works.”

But the bottomline is, speech-to-text means very different things depending on who builds it.

For some companies, STT is the product; for others, it’s a supportive component that enables something else like TTS or voice cloning. That difference in intent has ripple effects on performance, reliability, and what “good” even looks like.

This comparison unpacks two very different speech systems:

• Smallest Pulse STT- a standalone, real-time speech-to-text engine built for AI-driven products

• ElevenLabs Scribe- a transcription product within a TTS-first voice AI platform

Introduction

Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs became known for its incredibly natural TTS voices, expressive, nuanced, and difficult to differentiate from human speakers. That technology is the centerpiece of their platform.

Scribe, their speech-to-text product, exists to complete a full voice pipeline: speech in, intelligence in the middle, speech out. That experience works especially if you’re building applications that loop directly back to ElevenLabs’ TTS.

But it’s important to understand Scribe’s origin. It is not built from the ground up as a best-in-class transcription engine competing with dedicated ASR providers. Its purpose is to support the larger ElevenLabs voice ecosystem.

And that shows in architecture, priorities, and trade-offs.

Smallest Pulse STT: Speech Infrastructure for Live AI Systems

Pulse STT approaches speech from the opposite direction.

For Pulse STT, transcription is not an accessory, it is the foundational input to live, AI-driven systems. It assumes speech is a streaming signal that must be delivered with predictability, low latency, and high reliability.

That assumption influences every technical choice:

• End-to-end latency optimized from the bottom up

• Predictable streaming behavior under load

• Broad language coverage with real-world accuracy

• Structured outputs suitable for live reasoning, compliance, and decision loops

Unlike ElevenLabs Scribe, Pulse STT focuses on making speech available immediately, accurately, and in the most actionable form possible.

Architecture: Similar Pipelines, Different Optimization Priorities

At a high level, both systems fit into the same modern voice architecture:

Speech → STT → LLM → TTS

This is standard across the industry and not a differentiator on its own.

The practical difference lies in how the STT layer behaves within that pipeline, particularly under real-time and production conditions.

ElevenLabs Scribe

Scribe is optimized to function reliably within ElevenLabs’ voice stack. In practice, this means:

• Stable transcription suitable for conversational pipelines

• Performance characteristics aligned with end-to-end voice workflows

• Latency that is acceptable for near-real-time use
  
  

This aligns with ElevenLabs’ broader focus on speech generation and voice experience, where STT is an enabling component rather than the primary optimization surface.

Smallest Pulse STT

Pulse STT focuses narrowly on the STT boundary itself. Its optimization efforts are concentrated on:

• Lower and more consistent streaming latency

• Faster availability of partial results

• Stable behavior under concurrent real-time streams

This does not imply that other providers cannot support similar architectures. It simply reflects where Pulse places most of its engineering effort.

Accuracy Under Real-World Conditions

On clean, studio-quality audio, both systems perform reasonably well.

Differences become more visible as audio quality degrades. Across internal benchmarks and production usage, Pulse STT shows lower word error rates on:

• Phone-quality (8kHz) audio

• Noisy recordings

• Accented English and multilingual speech

Scribe performs adequately for conversational use cases and controlled inputs, but accuracy drops more noticeably on challenging audio. This is consistent with its role as a supporting component rather than a transcription-first system.

Latency and Streaming Behavior

Latency is one of the clearest points of differentiation.

Pulse STT typically delivers partial results with p95 latency under ~200ms, which keeps it within the range most users perceive as instantaneous. This makes it suitable for applications that depend on live turn-taking or interruption handling.

ElevenLabs Scribe supports streaming but typically exhibits higher p95 latency (often several hundred milliseconds). This is sufficient for near-real-time voice workflows but becomes more noticeable in tightly coupled STT → LLM → TTS loops.

Language Coverage and Consistency

ElevenLabs advertises broad language coverage, but transcription quality varies significantly by language. High-resource languages perform reasonably well, while lower-resource and accented languages show larger error rates.

Pulse STT supports fewer languages overall, but prioritizes consistent quality across its supported set. Automatic language detection and live code-switching are designed for production use cases rather than headline breadth.

Pricing and Cost Predictability

Pulse STT uses straightforward per-minute pricing with all core features included. This makes usage costs easier to forecast as volume grows.

ElevenLabs Scribe uses a credit-based model tied to subscription tiers. Effective cost depends on usage patterns and how much of the broader ElevenLabs platform is used. For teams already paying for ElevenLabs TTS, Scribe may feel incremental; at scale, costs are less predictable.

Integration Considerations

Scribe integrates tightly with ElevenLabs TTS, which simplifies development for teams committed to that ecosystem.

Pulse STT integrates with any LLM or TTS provider. Many teams use Pulse for transcription while continuing to use ElevenLabs or other providers for speech synthesis. This flexibility can be useful as requirements evolve.

Final Take

ElevenLabs Scribe and Smallest Pulse STT are built for different roles.

Scribe is part of a voice platform, optimized to enable expressive speech generation and conversational workflows. Pulse STT is a dedicated transcription engine, optimized for real-time performance, predictability, and production reliability.

As voice systems move deeper into live AI workflows, these distinctions become more visible. Choosing between them is less about feature checklists and more about where transcription sits in your system’s critical path.