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Getting accurate meeting transcripts to power features and workflows in your SaaS application can take months if you’re trying to work around native platform limitations. If you’re trying to ship features faster, then wrestling with platform-specific OAuth flows, audio processing, diarization, and cross-platform audio capture feels like a big waste of time unless you’re trying to compete on integrations alone.
More often than not, that’s not the case. A majority of the product builders we talk to are trying to build features that stand out in AI-native ecosystem. They’re trying to differentiate by shipping features built with good data, not spend their engineering resources trying to capture that data instead.
This creates a fundamental decision. You could build your own transcription stack or use APIs that handle audio capture and processing complexity for you. This guide compares both approaches, leading transcription APIs and unified meeting solutions available to developers in 2025.
Building meeting transcription is hard
Good meeting transcription features involve more than just converting audio to text.
You need to make sure your audio capture mechanisms are as reliable as your transcription accuracy. If they fail even five percent of the time, you end up with angry customers who can’t trust your product.
You also want to make your transcription processes as far from manual as possible. This means they can work without users having to manually toggle settings or remember to enable transcripts for scheduled meetings on your calendar.
All this needs to happen while handling the unique constraints of each video platform.
Here are a few examples:
- Zoom transcript files (.vtt/.srt) generated after a meeting are not accessible directly through the Zoom Meeting SDK commands. You can use the SDK to embed and control live Zoom meetings in your app, but you’ll need to build a separate audio processing infrastructure for transcriptions on top of this.
- Microsoft Teams transcription has strict organization-wide permissions that make it unsuitable for SaaS applications facilitating transcription capabilities across multiple customer organizations or cross-organization calls. Even with proper OAuth scopes, transcripts are only accessible to meeting organizers and specifically authorized users.
- Google Meet transcript generation is available with Google’s REST API, it provides minimal metadata and is restricted to users on specific Google Workspace plans. It’s an unreliable method for getting transcriptions to help those with Google Workspace Basic users and personal Gmail accounts, which can make up a substantial number of your app users.
What transcription systems need in production-ready apps
Beyond basic speech-to-text conversion, production meeting transcription requires several technical components that significantly impact development complexity:
- Audio processing infrastructure capable of handling multiple concurrent streams with consistent quality
- Speaker diarization to identify who said what in multi-participant calls. This is becoming a necessity for actionable meeting intelligence
- Real-time vs batch processing decisions based on your application’s latency requirements and user experience needs
- Enterprise compliance including data encryption, retention policies, and audit trails for regulated industries
- Calendar synchronization to automatically schedule bots for upcoming meetings without manual intervention
- Audio quality optimization including noise reduction, echo cancellation, and adaptive bitrate handling for varied network conditions
- Multi-language and accent support for applications serving global user bases with diverse linguistic requirements
- Custom vocabulary integration to accurately transcribe domain-specific terminology, product names, and industry jargon
Best APIs for building transcription into your app
| Solution | Best for | Platform coverage | Key advantages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nylas Notetaker API | Customer-facing SaaS apps | Zoom + Teams + Google Meet | Complete meeting infrastructure with calendar sync |
| AssemblyAI | Voice agents, real-time apps | Audio-only (requires separate meeting bots) | Sub-second latency (300ms) |
| Deepgram | High-compliance enterprises | Audio-only (requires separate meeting bots) | On-premise deployment options |
| OpenAI Whisper | Simple batch processing | Audio-only (requires separate meeting bots) | Lowest cost per minute |
| AWS Transcribe | AWS ecosystem integration | Audio-only (requires separate meeting bots) | Native AWS service integration |
| Speechmatics | High-compliance enterprises | Audio-only (requires separate meeting bots) | High transcription accuracy |
For teams wanting more control over their transcription pipeline, these APIs provide the building blocks for custom implementation for your app.
AssemblyAI
Best for: AssemblyAI is best for developers building voice agents or applications requiring sub-second transcription latency.
Key features:
- Real-time streaming with 300ms P50 latency
- Speaker identification and change detection
- Custom vocabulary boosting for domain-specific terms
- LeMUR integration for transcript summarization and analysis
- Async/batch transcription support for 99+ languages with automatic language detection
Limitations:
- Requires separate meeting bot infrastructure to capture audio from video platforms
- No built-in calendar integration for automated meeting scheduling
- Real-time features limited to English with best performance
Pricing: Real-time streaming starts at $0.15 per hour while async transcription begins at $0.37 per hour.
Deepgram
Best for: Deepgram is best for enterprise teams needing on-premises deployment or extensive language support.
Key features:
- Nova-3 model supports real-time transcription and code-switching for 10 languages
- On-premises and cloud deployment options
- Smart formatting for improved readability
- Up to 100 domain-specific vocabulary terms (Full custom models for enterprise plans)
- WebSocket streaming with configurable latency controls
Limitations:
- Requires separate meeting bot infrastructure to capture audio from video platforms
- No built-in calendar integration for automated meeting scheduling
- Complex deployment setup for on-premises installations
- Higher learning curve compared to simpler APIs
- Premium features require enterprise contracts
Pricing: Pay-as-you-go starts at $0.0043 per 15-second increment.
OpenAI Whisper
Best for: OpenAI Whisper is best for developers wanting proven accuracy without infrastructure complexity. Suitable use cases include post-meeting transcript generation, batch processing of recorded calls, and content transcription for knowledge bases.
Key features:
- High accuracy across diverse languages and accents
- Simple REST API with less integration complexity
- Automatic language detection
- Support for common audio formats (mp3, wav, m4a, etc.)
- Consistent pricing regardless of audio language
Limitations:
- Requires separate meeting bot infrastructure to capture audio from video platforms
- No built-in calendar integration
- File-based only. Has no real-time streaming capabilities
- 25MB file size limit requires chunking for longer recordings
- No speaker diarization or advanced audio intelligence features
- Processing delays for longer audio files
Pricing: $0.006 per minute of audio processed, regardless of language or complexity.
AWS Transcribe
Best for: AWS Transcribe is best for teams already using AWS infrastructure who need reliable, scalable transcription for AWS-native applications and compliance-focused workflows.
Key Features:
- Real-time and batch transcription options
- Integration with AWS services (S3, Lambda, etc.)
- Custom vocabulary and language model support
- Medical and call center specialized models
- Comprehensive security and compliance certifications
Limitations:
- Requires separate meeting bot infrastructure to capture audio from video platforms
- No built-in calendar integration
- May have lower real-time accuracy than other STT competitors
- Best accuracy requires additional configuration tuning
Pricing: Real-time transcription starts at $0.024 per minute. Batch processing begins at $0.02 per minute.
Speechmatics
Best for: Speechmatics is best for enterprise applications that require high compliance, transcription accuracy, and on-premises deployment.
Key Features:
- Industry-leading accuracy across 55+ languages
- Real-time and batch processing options
- On-premise deployment
- Custom acoustic model training
- Advanced punctuation and formatting controls
Limitations:
- Requires separate meeting bot infrastructure to capture audio from video platforms
- No built-in calendar integration
- Enterprise-focused pricing may not suit smaller teams
- Complex setup process for fine-tuning transcription
- Limited free tier for evaluation
Pricing: Contact sales for custom pricing.
Nylas Notetaker API
Best for: Product teams building customer-facing applications that need reliable meeting data and easy integration with email and calendar providers
The Nylas Notetaker provides a single API for deploying meeting bots to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. The service includes built-in transcription powered by AssemblyAI, speaker identification, and native calendar synchronization.
Key Features:
- Unified API for Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet
- Native email and calendar API (Google, Microsoft, IMAP, and more)
- Calendar integration for automated bot scheduling
- Built-in AssemblyAI transcription with speaker diarization
- Webhook notifications for real-time processing
- Enterprise compliance (SOC2, HIPAA, GDPR)
Limitations:
- Meeting participants see bots join as visible attendees
- No real-time transcripts
- Pricing scales with usage rather than flat monthly rates
Pricing: Pricing starts at $0.70 per hour for recording and transcription capabilities.
What transcription software works best for you
For applications that need more custom controls, building with specialized transcription APIs like AssemblyAI or Deepgram are the most flexible to optimize for accuracy, latency, and feature sets. This approach makes sense if you have audio processing expertise on your team and can invest in the infrastructure needed to capture meeting audio reliably.
For teams building customer-facing SaaS applications, unified meeting APIs like Nylas reduce development time for recording and transcription capabilities that work across Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet.
For organizations already committed to specific cloud ecosystems, native platform APIs like AWS Transcribe can offer an easier path to integrating with existing infrastructure and billing systems, though they may require more configuration for ideal accuracy.
A successful implementation begins with proof-of-concept testing using representative audio data. We’ve seen many builders underestimate how platform-specific edge cases and audio quality variations may affect transcription accuracy.
What else to consider before implementing a transcription API
Before committing to a transcription approach, evaluate this:
Audio capture complexity: Can your team build and maintain meeting bot infrastructure, or do you need managed solutions that handle platform integration?
Accuracy requirements: Do minor transcription errors break your application’s core functionality, or can you build features that work reliably with 90-95% accuracy?
Language and accent support: Will your application reach global users with diverse accents and languages and require specialized model training?
Compliance requirements: Do you need specific certifications (SOC2, HIPAA, GDPR) or data residency controls?
Real-time vs. post-meeting processing requirements: Does your application need immediate transcript access for live coaching or real-time analysis?
Speaker identification needs: Do you need to identify specific participants by name, or are generic speaker labels sufficient?
Budget and scaling model: Do you prefer predictable per-user pricing or usage-based costs that scale with actual meeting volume?
For developers evaluating meeting transcription APIs, Nylas provides production-ready meeting bot infrastructure with built-in transcription across all major platforms. You can test the API with your actual meeting scenarios at with five hours of free recording in our sandbox!
