GPT-4o Mini Transcribe vs Scribe v2
OpenAI's GPT-4o Mini Transcribe and ElevenLabs's Scribe v2 both target speech generation, but they price and behave differently. Here is the side-by-side.
Pricing checked against provider documentation on . How we verify
The short answer
GPT-4o Mini Transcribe is the cheaper option — roughly 1.2x less on a blended workload, and it suits low-cost transcription inside the openai stack. Scribe v2 justifies its premium when you need widest language coverage with diarization.
OpenAI • GPT-4o Transcribe
$0.00 / $
/ audio min (input / output)
Half the price of the full transcription model and the cheapest managed option OpenAI offers. Accuracy holds up well on clean audio; test it specifically on noisy recordings, strong accents, and technical vocabulary before committing, since that is where the gap to the larger model shows.
ElevenLabs • Scribe
$0.00 / $
/ audio min (input / output)
Transcription across 99 languages with speaker diarization and word-level timestamps, billed at $0.22 per audio hour. Worth knowing that ElevenLabs credits are shared across its products, so heavy text-to-speech use can eat into the same allowance your transcription draws from.
Input price
Scribe v2 is 23% more expensive than GPT-4o Mini Transcribe on input tokens.
Specification comparison
| Attribute | GPT-4o Mini Transcribe | Scribe v2 |
|---|---|---|
| Input (/ audio min) | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Output (/ audio min) | — | — |
| Cached input | — | — |
| Context window | — | — |
| Max output | — | — |
| Native reasoning | No | No |
| Knowledge cutoff | — | — |
| Relative latency | low | medium |
| Open weights | No | No |
| API model ID | gpt-4o-mini-transcribe | scribe-v2 |
| Status | stable | stable |
GPT-4o Mini Transcribe: The OpenAI transcription endpoint caps uploads at 25 MB, which a single long recording will exceed.
Scribe v2: Published as $0.22 per audio hour. Entity detection adds $0.07/hour and keyterm prompting $0.05/hour. A realtime variant runs $0.39/hour (~$0.0065/min) at roughly 150 ms latency.
Choose GPT-4o Mini Transcribe if…
- Clean batch audio at volume
- Voice note transcription
- Draft transcripts for human review
- Prototyping before choosing a provider
Choose Scribe v2 if…
- Multilingual transcription with speakers
- Subtitling with word timings
- Interview and research archives
- Pipelines already using ElevenLabs voices
Frequently asked
Is GPT-4o Mini Transcribe or Scribe v2 cheaper?
GPT-4o Mini Transcribe is cheaper. On a blended 3:1 input-to-output workload it costs about 1.2x less than Scribe v2.
Which has the larger context window, GPT-4o Mini Transcribe or Scribe v2?
Both accept up to — tokens, so context is not a differentiator here.
Should I use GPT-4o Mini Transcribe or Scribe v2?
Pick GPT-4o Mini Transcribe for low-cost transcription inside the openai stack. Pick Scribe v2 for widest language coverage with diarization. If cost dominates the decision, GPT-4o Mini Transcribe wins; if you need the capability ceiling, benchmark both on your own evals before committing.