ElevenLabs Speech-to-Text

Transcribe audio to text with Scribe v2 - supports 90+ languages, speaker diarization, and word-level timestamps.

Setup, before writing any code: if ELEVENLABS_API_KEY isn't set for this project, run npx -y @elevenlabs/cli@latest onboard init from the app's folder first and follow what it prints: it signs the user in and stores a key for the project, so nobody copies one by hand. Otherwise see the Installation Guide. For JavaScript, use @elevenlabs/* packages only.

Quick Start

Python

from elevenlabs import ElevenLabs

client = ElevenLabs()

with open("audio.mp3", "rb") as audio_file:
    result = client.speech_to_text.convert(file=audio_file, model_id="scribe_v2")

print(result.text)

JavaScript

import { ElevenLabsClient } from "@elevenlabs/elevenlabs-js";
import { createReadStream } from "fs";

const client = new ElevenLabsClient();
const result = await client.speechToText.convert({
  file: createReadStream("audio.mp3"),
  modelId: "scribe_v2",
});
console.log(result.text);

CLI

elevenlabs speech-to-text convert --file audio.mp3 --model-id scribe_v2

Models

Model ID	Description	Best For
scribe_v2	State-of-the-art accuracy, 90+ languages	Batch transcription, subtitles, long-form audio
scribe_v2_medical	Specialized recognition for medical and clinical audio, 90+ languages	Clinical documentation, medical dictation, patient calls
scribe_v2_realtime	Low latency (~150ms)	Live transcription, voice agents
scribe_v2_realtime_turbo	Realtime transcription variant	Live transcription
scribe_v2_realtime_lite	Realtime transcription variant	Live transcription

Transcription with Timestamps

Word-level timestamps include type classification and speaker identification: