Deepgram vs Cloudflare Workers AI for Speech-to-text / transcription (Oct 2026)
Depot Pick for this job: Deepgram. Cloudflare Workers AI is the provider with the cheapest sourced SKU in this job's unit. Both have a sourced price in usd_per_minute, so this comparison is like for like on price. Prices are each provider's lowest sourced SKU in that unit only (no blending across units, input/output or context tiers), not quality-adjusted.
Scores as of 2026-10-19 / 2026-09-14 (8 / 43 days; stale after 30). Prices carry their own dates.
| Deepgram (Depot Pick) | Cloudflare Workers AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Job-weighted overall | 8.50 | 7.69 |
| Capability fit | 8.8 | 6.8 |
| Price / performance | 8.8 | 8.5 |
| Latency / reliability | 8.6 | 8.2 |
| Developer & agent DX | 8.6 | 8.4 |
| Privacy / data retention | 8.2 | 8 |
| Lock-in risk (higher = worse) | 4 | 4.5 |
| Maturity / track record | 9 | 7.8 |
| Lowest sourced SKU (usd_per_minute) | $0.0043 (Nova-3 Monolingual pre-recorded speech-to-text) source · as of 2026-10-19 | $0.0005 (@cf/openai/whisper audio minute) source · as of 2026-10-03 |
| Free option for this job | none listed | Cloudflare Workers AI speech-to-text (Whisper) (free) — source |
| Score kind / confidence | curated_estimate / high | curated_estimate / high |
When not to use Deepgram
Already all-in on OpenAI and Whisper quality/latency is fine — openai-media; need richest audio-intelligence features (summaries/PII) — AssemblyAI; ultra-cheap batch Whisper on Groq LPU — groq.
Lock-in
Stored lock-in risk (0–10, higher = more lock-in): Deepgram 4, Cloudflare Workers AI 4.5. Self-host fallback for this job: OpenAI Whisper, whisper.cpp.
Agents: GET /api/compare?providers=deepgram,cloudflare-workers-ai&jtbd=speech-to-text · full job page · methodology