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What's the Difference Between Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Translate?

Compare Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Translate side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

Compare side-by-side

Comparisons
Amazon Transcribe
Amazon Translate
Category

Machine Learning, Speech AI

Machine Learning, Language
Description

Automatic speech recognition service that converts audio to text.

Neural machine translation service that delivers fast, high-quality, affordable language translation.
Best for
  • Call center analytics
  • Subtitling
  • Meeting transcription
  • Medical transcription
  • Content indexing
  • Website localization
  • Document translation
  • Chat translation
  • Multilingual analytics
Key features
  • Real-time transcription
  • Custom vocabulary
  • Speaker identification
  • Channel identification
  • Toxicity detection
  • 75+ languages
  • Custom terminology
  • Real-time translation
  • Batch translation
  • Formality control
Pricing model

Pay per second of audio transcribed

Pay per million characters translated
Free tier

Yes

Yes
Expert take

“Custom vocabulary and custom language models are the two levers for improving accuracy on domain-specific terminology. For real-time use cases like live captioning, streaming transcription delivers partial results with low latency while speaker diarization separates overlapping voices.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“Translate supports 75+ languages with neural machine translation. Custom Terminology ensures brand names and domain-specific terms are never mistranslated.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about Amazon Transcribe »

Learn more about Amazon Translate »

When to use Amazon Transcribe or Amazon Translate

Use Amazon Transcribe when:

  • Call center analytics
  • Subtitling
  • Meeting transcription
  • Medical transcription
  • Content indexing

Learn more about Amazon Transcribe »

Use Amazon Translate when:

  • Website localization
  • Document translation
  • Chat translation
  • Multilingual analytics

Learn more about Amazon Translate »

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