AssemblyAI was built for the benchmark. Gladia was built for the call.

For teams whose product needs to work in more than one language in real time, or where you don't want to pick a model tier and a latency mode before every call, yes. Solaria-1 is one real-time model that code-switches live across all 100+ supported languages, versus AssemblyAI's Universal lineup, which splits accuracy and language coverage across four separate configurations and caps real-time multilingual streaming at 18 languages. If your workload is primarily clean, single-language English audio at maximum throughput, AssemblyAI's Universal-3.5 Pro is a strong, well-documented choice.

Yes. Gladia publishes a dedicated AssemblyAI migration guide covering streaming and pre-recorded parameter mapping, so most teams can swap an AssemblyAI API key for a Gladia one without restructuring their integration.

Universal is AssemblyAI's speech-to-text model family, split across four configurations: Universal-2 (99 languages, async fallback), Universal-3.5 Pro (18 languages, highest accuracy), Pro Streaming (18 languages, real-time), and a Multilingual Streaming mode still in beta and capped at 18 languages. Gladia's equivalents are Solaria-1 (real-time, 100+ languages with live code-switching in a single model) and Solaria-3 (async, tuned for real-world English and European-language audio). On Gladia's open benchmarks, Solaria-3 outperforms AssemblyAI's Universal on conversational speech (Switchboard) and real customer calls; Universal v3 scores a lower WER on clean, scripted real-time audio and higher async throughput.

Yes. Solaria-1 handles live code-switching and translation across all 100+ supported languages. AssemblyAI's real-time multilingual streaming mode and single-language streaming models cover up to 18 languages.

On real-world conversational audio, yes: Solaria-3 beats AssemblyAI's Universal on Switchboard (33.9% vs 42.3% WER), real customer calls (9.6% vs 10.0%), and financial earnings calls (6.4% vs 6.9%). AssemblyAI's Universal v3 is stronger on clean, scripted real-time audio and on some European languages in audiobook-style recordings. Gladia publishes its full benchmark methodology so you can test both providers on your own audio rather than take either vendor's word for it.

On the Pipecat real-time benchmark, AssemblyAI's Universal v3 scores a lower WER (2.0%) than Gladia's Solaria-1 (2.7%) on clean, scripted speech, and processes async audio faster (64x vs 39x real-time on Earnings22). If your audio is clean and largely single-speaker English, that's a genuine AssemblyAI strength. Gladia's advantage shows up on the audio that's harder to get right: overlapping speakers, real customer calls, and conversations that move between languages.

Not typically. AssemblyAI's Universal-2 starts at $0.15/hour ($0.21/hour for Universal-3.5 Pro), but diarization, sentiment analysis, PII redaction, and summarization are billed separately on top, and dual-channel calls are billed on both channels. Gladia bundles diarization, sentiment, and custom vocabulary into one all-inclusive rate.

Gladia is a French company, which puts it under GDPR and EU jurisdiction by default. It holds SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, and HDS (French healthcare hosting) certifications, and never uses customer audio to retrain models. AssemblyAI is US-based, holds SOC 2 Type I and II and HIPAA (self-serve BAA on paid plans) with a GDPR-compliant DPA, but doesn't publish ISO 27001 or HDS certification — and its model retraining policy means customer audio can be used to improve its models unless you pay to opt out.

It's moving that way. AssemblyAI's LeMUR framework and LLM Gateway apply large language models directly to transcripts, positioning AssemblyAI at the application layer — the same layer occupied by many meeting-assistant and conversation-intelligence products built on top of its API. Gladia stays a specialist in transcription and audio intelligence infrastructure, with no meeting-assistant, agent, or conversation-intelligence product of its own that would compete with what you're building.

Yes. Gladia offers a free tier to start building immediately — generate an API key from the developer console and make your first transcription call in a single request, the same way you would with an AssemblyAI API key.