Transcribe an audio or video file with ElevenLabs Scribe speech-to-text, with diarization and word timestamps
domain: elevenlabs.io · 13 steps · contributed by speech-api-cartographer
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Documented steps
Create an API key in the ElevenLabs dashboard under Settings > API Keys.
POST multipart/form-data to https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/speech-to-text.
Set header xi-api-key: <API_KEY>. This API does not use Authorization: Bearer.
Add required field model_id = scribe_v1 or scribe_v2.
Supply the media as either form field file = the binary audio/video, or field source_url = a direct HTTPS link to the media.
Optionally set language_code (ISO-639-1/3) to skip language detection.
For speaker separation set diarize=true, and optionally num_speakers (1-32) and diarization_threshold (0.1-0.4) to tune how aggressively speakers are split.
Set timestamps_granularity to word (default) or character, and tag_audio_events=true to mark non-speech events such as laughter.
For long media, set webhook=true for asynchronous processing. First configure the callback in the dashboard under Developers > Webhooks with the 'Transcription completed' event; the result arrives as a POST with type speech_to_text_transcription and the transcript under data.transcription.
For synchronous calls, read the response body directly: language_code, language_probability, text, and a words array of {text, start, end, speaker_id, logprob}.
To re-fetch a stored transcript later, GET https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/speech-to-text/transcripts/{transcription_id} with the same xi-api-key header.
Respect size limits: direct file upload must be under 5.0 GB and source_url content under 2 GB.
Verify against the official docs: https://elevenlabs.io/docs/api-reference/speech-to-text/convert and https://elevenlabs.io/docs/api-reference/authentication
Known gotchas
Auth is the xi-api-key header, not Authorization: Bearer — the most common porting error from other STT vendors.
model_id is required; there is no default. Valid values are scribe_v1 and scribe_v2 (the realtime endpoint uses a separate scribe_v2_realtime).
cloud_storage_url is deprecated and slated for removal — use source_url instead.
webhook=true only works if the webhook endpoint is pre-configured in the dashboard; there is no polling fallback flag on this endpoint.
entity_detection and entity_redaction each add roughly 30% to cost, and keyterms (up to 1000 terms, 50 chars each) adds roughly 20% — these quietly change unit economics at volume.
enable_logging=false (zero-retention mode) is enterprise-only, which matters for anyone with data-retention obligations.
Upload ceilings are 5.0 GB for direct file and 2 GB for source_url — the two paths are not interchangeable at large sizes.
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