MirrorCaption vs Gladia — A Meeting App vs a Speech API

MirrorCaption and Gladia both support real-time transcription and translation, but they serve different people at different layers of the stack. Gladia is a developer API, priced at $0.75/hr for real-time audio on its Starter plan, for engineering teams building voice products and meeting workflows. MirrorCaption is a browser-based meeting app: open it in Chrome or Edge and read captions and translations during the meeting without building an integration.

If you found Gladia while looking for a way to caption or translate your meetings, you found the infrastructure layer. This page explains what Gladia provides and when a developer API or a finished meeting app is the better fit.

What Is Gladia?

Gladia is an AI audio infrastructure company whose core products are real-time and asynchronous speech APIs. Developers integrate Gladia into voice agents, meeting assistants, compliance workflows, media tools, and call analytics products. The company says its platform is used by more than 300,000 developers and thousands of organizations.

In practice, putting Gladia into a meeting product means writing code. The standard real-time integration involves creating a session, opening a WebSocket connection, managing credentials, handling partial and final events, and building the interface that presents the results. Gladia provides documentation and a developer playground for testing, but not a finished meeting app that an employee can simply open beside a call.

On the technical side, Gladia advertises sub-300ms real-time latency, supports 100+ languages with automatic language switching, and includes translation and speaker diarization in its API offering. Its published compliance coverage includes SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR. Enterprise options include zero data retention and custom hosting.

The free tier provides 10 hours of transcription per month. Above that, real-time transcription on the Starter plan costs $0.75/hr; the Growth plan reduces this rate for higher-volume usage. Enterprise plans include custom model fine-tuning and debundled pricing.

Two Audiences Behind "Gladia Alternative"

Searching for a Gladia alternative usually signals one of two situations.

You're a developer who needs a different API

If you have evaluated Gladia's API and want to compare it against other speech-to-text infrastructure options, the primary developer-facing alternatives are Deepgram (optimized for low-latency voice agent pipelines), AssemblyAI (LLM-integrated transcript analysis with a strong async post-processing story), and OpenAI Whisper (no native WebSocket streaming, but widely available and open-weight). Our Deepgram comparison and AssemblyAI comparison cover those in more detail. The rest of this page focuses on the second situation.

You're an end user who doesn't want an API at all

Some people who find Gladia were not looking for an API in the first place; they were searching for a meeting translation or transcription app and landed on developer infrastructure. If that describes you, MirrorCaption is the finished browser workflow, while Gladia is a toolkit an engineering team can use to build its own.

MirrorCaption: Transcription Without the Setup

MirrorCaption works in two modes, both accessible from a browser tab with no installation.

Meet mode runs in desktop Chrome or Microsoft Edge. It captures audio from your browser-based Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or Webex call — meeting-tab audio plus your microphone simultaneously — without any bot joining the meeting and without any extension installed. Other participants see only the standard meeting interface; MirrorCaption runs in a separate browser tab on your screen.

Talk mode runs in Chrome on mobile. It uses your phone's microphone to transcribe and translate face-to-face conversations in real time. For in-person meetings, interpreter-style conversations, or situations where both sides need to read the other person's words as they speak, you can hand the phone across the table and both parties follow along simultaneously.

No API key management is required on the user side. MirrorCaption issues short-lived session credentials internally; end users never handle API keys or configure authentication. Sign up with an email address or Google account, open the app, and start transcribing. Partial results appear as a speaker talks and update as more context arrives, rather than waiting for a post-meeting transcript.

Real-Time Translation: API Capability vs Finished Workflow

Gladia supports translation in both live and pre-recorded workflows. When translation is enabled for a live session, the API can return translated text alongside the original utterance and its metadata. That is a meaningful capability, and it means developers do not necessarily need a separate translation provider.

The difference is what happens around that capability. A Gladia customer still builds audio capture, session management, permissions, reconnect behavior, transcript storage, and the interface that displays original and translated text. MirrorCaption packages those pieces into a browser app and displays the original and translation side by side while the meeting is in progress.

Translation covers 50+ selectable language pairs. Each translated word links back to the source word it came from — tap any translated word to see the original in context. For bilingual professionals, negotiators, and language learners, this is the functional core of the product, not a secondary feature.

Pricing: What the Numbers Actually Mean

The pricing models for Gladia and MirrorCaption reflect the structural difference between API infrastructure and a finished end-user application.

Gladia charges per hour at the API level. At $0.75/hr on the Starter plan for real-time transcription, a developer building a meeting assistant for a team where each member attends roughly one hour of meetings per day consumes meaningful API cost before any product margin or infrastructure overhead. The actual end-user price depends entirely on what the developer builds, how they price it, and how their own infrastructure costs stack up. Gladia's Growth plan reduces the per-hour rate for higher-volume usage, and enterprise plans offer custom pricing.

MirrorCaption charges end users directly.

The Premium tier is a one-time €99 purchase. It includes 200 hours of hosted transcription credit and future product updates. It is not unlimited transcription forever: once the included credit is used, additional hours come from Voice Packs sold separately — 5 hours for €2.99 (€0.60/hr) or 15 hours for €7.99 (€0.53/hr).

The Annual tier is €54.99/year and includes 100 hours of hosted transcription credit for the year.

The free tier is 1 hour, one-time, with no credit card required and no monthly reset. MirrorCaption does not store meeting audio on its servers; transcripts are saved locally in your browser. Gladia's free tier provides 10 hours per month — review Gladia's current data-use policy before sending sensitive meeting audio on any free plan, as usage terms differ by tier.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Where Gladia Is Still the Right Choice

Gladia is a well-built, developer-grade API. It is the right choice when:

• You are an engineering team building a product that needs a real-time speech-to-text layer — a voice agent, a meeting assistant you are shipping to customers, a compliance recording tool, or a call analytics platform. Gladia provides the primitives; you build the product on top.
• You need enterprise compliance at the API level. Gladia publishes SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR coverage, with Enterprise options for zero data retention and custom hosting.
• You need 100+ languages with native code-switching built into the transcription layer — including language pairs not covered by MirrorCaption's translation offering. Gladia handles speakers who switch languages mid-sentence without breaking the transcript.
• You require custom model fine-tuning or custom hosting. Gladia's Enterprise plan advertises both. MirrorCaption is a managed end-user service and does not offer an API or self-hosted tier.

MirrorCaption is not an API and does not offer the developer primitives Gladia provides. If your team's next project is a voice application, Gladia belongs in your evaluation alongside Deepgram and AssemblyAI.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Gladia used for?

Gladia is a speech API platform used by developers to build voice-enabled applications such as meeting assistants, voice agents, compliance tools, and call analytics products. It offers a playground for developers, but not a finished meeting-caption application. Production use involves integrating its APIs, managing credentials, handling transcript and translation events, and building the end-user workflow.

Is Gladia free for real-time transcription?

Gladia offers a free tier that includes 10 hours of transcription per month. Above that, real-time transcription on the Starter plan costs $0.75/hr. The free tier is well-suited for evaluation and low-volume testing. Before sending sensitive meeting audio on any free plan, review Gladia's current data-use policy for that tier — usage terms differ between free and paid accounts.

Can I use Gladia without writing code?

You can test Gladia without building an application by using its developer playground. Turning it into a production meeting workflow, however, requires API integration and an interface around the results. If you need a finished meeting transcription and translation tool, MirrorCaption works directly in Chrome or Edge.

Does MirrorCaption work without an API key?

Yes. End users never manage API keys in MirrorCaption. The app handles credential provisioning internally: short-lived access credentials are issued per session by MirrorCaption's servers, with no API key exposed to the end user. You sign up with an email address or Google account, open the app in desktop Chrome or Edge for meeting-tab audio (Meet mode) or in Chrome on mobile for microphone capture (Talk mode), and start transcribing. No configuration step is needed before your first session.

Which is better for multilingual meetings: Gladia or MirrorCaption?

For attending and following multilingual meetings as a participant, MirrorCaption is the more direct option because it displays transcription and translation side by side in 50+ selectable languages without an integration project. Gladia supports transcription and translation across 100+ languages, including language switching, and is the stronger fit for engineering teams building their own multilingual voice product.

Is MirrorCaption a Gladia alternative for developers?

Not directly — they operate at different layers of the stack. Gladia is a developer API providing WebSocket streaming, speaker diarization, 100+ language transcription, and enterprise compliance certifications. MirrorCaption is an end-user application built for meeting participants. If you are evaluating Gladia as an API and need a developer-facing alternative, the closer comparisons are our Deepgram overview and AssemblyAI overview. If you are looking for a finished meeting transcription and translation app that requires no engineering, MirrorCaption is the answer.

Related comparisons: MirrorCaption vs Deepgram · MirrorCaption vs AssemblyAI · Best speech-to-text software 2026 · Real-time vs post-meeting transcription