Spanish transcription benchmark
Why does AudioMap use AssemblyAI and not Whisper? Because every percentage point of Word Error Rate (WER) shows in the final result. Here is the public data by engine and regional variant.
WER (Word Error Rate): percentage of incorrect words out of total. Lower = better. 0% would be perfect. For professional use (legal, medical, journalism) WER <10% is considered acceptable; ideal <7%.
AssemblyAI wins in all variants
Universal-2 maintains WER <11% across all 5 tested Hispanic variants. Whisper-large-v3 ranges from 14.7% to 19.1%. A 7-10 point difference in regions with yeísmo or high speech rate (Rioplatense, Chilean).
Whisper is reasonable only in neutral Spanish
Whisper performs acceptably in standard es-ES but loses quality in regional variants. TurboScribe, Fireflies (non-English) and many low-cost alternatives use it — you're paying for quality that isn't the best available.
Coming: AudioMap's own benchmark
Q3 2026 we'll publish a benchmark with our own curated audio (10h per regional variant, professional domain, human evaluation). We promise transparency: open dataset and methodology.
120 minutes per month included. No credit card.