Models

Compare the Enhanced, Standard, and Melia 1 models and choose the right one for your audio.

Compare the Speech to Text models and choose the right one for your audio.

Speechmatics offers three models for Speech to Text: Enhanced, Standard, and Melia 1. All three use the same API. The model you choose determines accuracy, how multilingual audio is handled, and which processing modes and regions are available.

Compare the models

Capability	Enhanced	Standard	Melia 1
model value	enhanced	standard	melia-1
Accuracy	Highest	High	High
Turnaround	Fast	Fastest	Fast
Processing modes	Batch and Realtime	Batch and Realtime	Batch
Regions	EU, US, AUS	EU, US, AUS	EU, US
Language handling	Selected language or pack	Selected language or pack	Automatic multilingual
Custom dictionary	✅	✅	Not yet
Confidence scores	✅	✅	Not yet
Speech intelligence	✅	✅	Not yet

Enhanced and Standard are feature-identical and differ only in accuracy and speed: Enhanced delivers the highest accuracy, and Standard prioritizes throughput. Melia 1 matches Standard for accuracy and adds automatic multilingual transcription, but it is available for Batch only and supports a reduced feature set. Speech intelligence covers translation, summarization, topic detection, chapters, sentiment, and audio events.

Choose a model

Use Enhanced for the highest accuracy on single-language audio, such as medical, legal, or subtitling work.

Use Standard when throughput, cost, or latency matter more than the last increment of accuracy, such as archival transcription, content indexing, or large-scale captioning.

Use Melia 1 for audio that contains more than one language, including speakers who switch language mid-conversation. It offers fast turnaround and accuracy on par with Standard.

Specify a model

Set the model property in your transcription config. If you do not set it, the standard model is used.

This config selects the enhanced model:

{
  "type": "transcription",
  "transcription_config": {
    "model": "enhanced",
    "language": "en"
  }
}

Enhanced and Standard are available for Realtime and Batch transcription. Melia 1 is available for Batch transcription only.

Melia 1

Melia 1 is a multilingual model. It transcribes audio that contains more than one language, including speakers who switch language mid-conversation, and returns a single continuous transcript. It does not require you to select a language pack, and its accuracy is on par with the Standard model.

Set "model": "melia-1" and "language": "multi":

{
  "type": "transcription",
  "transcription_config": {
    "model": "melia-1",
    "language": "multi"
  }
}

Melia 1 requires language to be set to multi. Any other value returns an error.

Melia 1 is available for Batch transcription in the EU and US regions only. It is not available in the Australia (AU1) region.

Region	Endpoint
EU1 (Europe)	eu1.asr.api.speechmatics.com
US1 (USA)	us1.asr.api.speechmatics.com

For the full list of Batch endpoints, refer to Authentication.

Melia 1 matches the Enhanced and Standard models for core transcription features, including diarization, word timings, punctuation, notifications, and output locale. It does not yet support the following features, which are available with the Enhanced and Standard models:

• Custom vocabulary and formatting: custom dictionary, find and replace, spoken form output, profanity tagging
• Output detail: confidence scores, entity detection, audio filtering
• Speech intelligence: audio events, translation, summarization, chapters, topics, sentiment

Melia 1 is an early-access model and its feature support is expanding. Check the release notes for the latest.

To configure language hints and read the per-language output metadata, refer to Input and Output.

Operating points

The model property replaces the operating_point property. Existing configs that use operating_point continue to transcribe without changes.

In SaaS (cloud) deployments, operating_point is deprecated. It maps to model and accepts the same enhanced and standard values. Use model going forward.