Best for
Best for developers building real-time speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice agents through an API.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Voice & Speech Comparison
Deepgram vs. Read AI
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for organisations that want meetings, email and messages searchable in one place, and metrics on how the meetings themselves are being run.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | Deepgram | Read AI |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Usage-based, pay-as-you-go No minimums and no expiry. Speech-to-text from $0.0048 / minute on Nova-3 monolingual streaming, text-to-speech from $0.0150 / 1,000 characters on Aura-1, and the Voice Agent API from $0.056 / minute. | Free plan; Pro $19.75 / user / month Pro is $15 per user per month billed annually. Enterprise is $29.75 monthly or $22.50 annually, Enterprise+ $39.75 monthly or $29.75 annually and requires five or more licences. Every plan is measured on 30 meetings a month. |
| Free trial | $200 in free credits to start, no credit card required | Free plan with 5 meeting transcripts a month |
| Commercial use | Yes, usage-based | Not stated |
| Output | Speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice agents | Meeting reports with summary, topics, action items, key questions and a speaker-separated transcript |
| API | Yes | Yes, plus an MCP server and Claude and ChatGPT connectors |
| Hosting | Cloud, or self-hosted for in-region and in-house data control | Cloud, with Windows, macOS, Android and iOS apps and a Chrome extension |
| Voice cloning | No, the catalogue is fixed: 40+ prebuilt Aura-2 voices across English, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Japanese, with no cloning or custom-voice product on the price list | No, Read AI transcribes, summarises and measures meetings and does not synthesise or clone voices |
| Real-time use | Yes, real-time streaming speech-to-text and text-to-speech, plus batch processing | Yes, an in-meeting dashboard with live notes, transcription, summaries and meeting metrics as the call runs, on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet |
| Languages | 45+ languages for speech-to-text, with automatic language detection | Meeting reports in 16+ languages, including Arabic, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish |
| Speech-to-speech and dubbing | No dubbing or translation product. Speech-to-speech runs as a pipeline through the Voice Agent API, which handles listening, thinking and speaking with configurable speech-to-text models, LLM providers and voices, plus function calling mid-conversation | No dubbing or speech-to-speech translation |
| Editing and controls | Voice selection, plus encoding, bit rate, container and sample rate on the output, streamed audio and callbacks. Aura-2 is built to read naturally without SSML markup, and speed and style can be changed mid-conversation without restarting the session | Meeting reports with summary, topics, action items and key questions, a meeting coach scoring talking speed, filler words, bias and charisma with coaching trends, audio and video playback with highlights from the Enterprise plan, Ask Read search across meetings, email and messages with direct access to Anthropic and OpenAI models, audio and video uploads, and workspace rules controlling which meetings Read joins |
| Consent and trust | SOC 2 Type 1 and 2, HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA and PCI compliant; self-hosting for in-house data control | Custom assistant branding, naming on all platforms and a logo on Zoom, plus workspace distribution and sharing rules; Enterprise+ adds SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, domain capture, a custom data retention policy and HIPAA compliance support |
| MCP-ready | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | more entries Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | Community forum | Email helpdesk |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | more entries Documentation and knowledge base, Guided onboarding |
| Company size | Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | more entries Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | Not stated | Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, HubSpot, Salesforce, Jira, Confluence, Notion, Asana, Slack, Zapier, ChatGPT, Claude |
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The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price Deepgram Usage-based, pay-as-you-go Read AI Free plan; Pro $19.75 / user / month
- Free trial Deepgram $200 in free credits to start, no credit card required Read AI Free plan with 5 meeting transcripts a month
- Deployment Deepgram Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise Read AI Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based
- Company size Deepgram Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Read AI Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
- Hosting Deepgram Cloud, or self-hosted for in-region and in-house data control Read AI Cloud, with Windows, macOS, Android and iOS apps and a Chrome extension
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
Deepgram
Strengths
- Unified speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice-agent APIs
- Real-time streaming with low latency for live applications
- Usage-based with $200 free credit and no card required
- Runs self-hosted for data control and compliance
Limitations
- Developer platform, not a consumer voice studio
- Several headline per-minute rates are promotional and sit below the list price, so the long-run cost depends on which rate applies
Read AI
Strengths
- Live notes and meeting metrics while the call is still running
- Meeting coach and trend reporting on how meetings themselves are run
- Search spans meetings, email and messages rather than calls alone
- MCP server with Claude and ChatGPT connectors
Limitations
- Free plan is capped at five meeting transcripts a month
- Audio and video playback only from the Enterprise plan up
- Meeting length is capped by plan, from one hour on Free to eight on Enterprise+
- SSO, SCIM, HIPAA support and data retention policies need Enterprise+ and five or more licences
Plans
Pricing
Deepgram
- Pay As You Go $0.0048 Per minute of Nova-3 monolingual streaming speech-to-text at the current promotional rate, $0.0077 at list. Nova-3 multilingual $0.0058, Flux English $0.0065. Text-to-speech $0.0150 / 1,000 characters on Aura-1 and $0.030 on Aura-2. Voice Agent API from $0.056 / minute. Add-ons are priced separately: redaction and diarization $0.0020 / minute each, entity detection $0.0017, keyterm prompting $0.0013. No minimums, no expiry, $200 in credits to start without a card.
- Growth From $4,000 Per year in prepaid credits, redeemed against usage at lower rates: Nova-3 monolingual streaming $0.0042 / minute, Aura-1 $0.0135 and Aura-2 $0.027 / 1,000 characters.
- Enterprise Not stated Custom pricing, volume commitments, self-hosting and dedicated support.
Read AI
- Free $0 Five meeting transcripts a month, best-in-class summaries for meetings, email and messaging, personalised meeting coach, basic integrations, topic readouts and one-hour maximum meeting length.
- Pro $19.75 Per user per month, $15 billed annually. Unlimited meeting transcripts and reports, priority report processing, 100 file upload credits a month and premium integrations including Notion, Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Confluence, Zapier and webhooks.
- Enterprise $29.75 Per user per month, $22.50 billed annually. Adds audio and video playback, video highlights, 200 file upload credits a month and premium support.
- Enterprise+ $39.75 Per user per month, $29.75 billed annually, five licences or more. Adds HIPAA compliance, SAML and SCIM, domain capture, a custom data retention policy, 300 file upload credits a month and workspace onboarding.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
Deepgram
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Read AI
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
Deepgram https://deepgram.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-01
Read AI https://www.read.ai · checked against the official source on 2026-09-16
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.