# Grok Voice Transcribe 2.0 Cuts Short-Phrase Errors; Price Stays Put

Times of AI Desk · 2026-09-18 · Models

[https://timesof.ai/2026/09/xai-grok-voice-transcribe-2](https://timesof.ai/2026/09/xai-grok-voice-transcribe-2)

> xAI shipped Grok Voice Transcribe 2.0 at unchanged $0.10 batch / $0.20 streaming per hour. Lab short-phrase WER falls from 20.6% to 6.8%; xAI cites first place on Artificial Analysis’s streaming accuracy board among 32 models.

**Correction / update, October 14, 2026:** The launch post announced a future default-model change. The current default comes from documentation updated October 3, not a confirmed September 18 switch.

Transcription price did not move. The claim that matters is the error cut on short phrases — and whether Artificial Analysis’s streaming board still shows that rank once other labs answer.

**xAI** (September 18): **Grok Voice Transcribe 2.0**, a speech-to-text model built on the audio foundation model behind Grok Voice. xAI says that across its real-world evaluations it is one of the most accurate transcription models available, and **twice as accurate as Grok Voice Transcribe 1.0, at the same price**. On the company’s **short-phrase set**, word error rate drops from **20.6% to 6.8%**.

## Price and availability

Batch **$0.10 per hour** of audio, streaming **$0.20 per hour**, with diarization, timestamps, and key terms included. The September 18 announcement said 2.0 **would soon become the default**, with 1.0 deprecated in the following weeks; users temporarily keeping 1.0 were told to pin it explicitly. The no-code-change claim applies to default-model integrations. Documentation updated October 3 lists **`grok-voice-transcribe-2.0`** as the default, **us-east-1**, batch/streaming support and keyterm prompting.

## Independent ranking

xAI says that on the public **Artificial Analysis** leaderboard, Transcribe 2.0 **ranks first for accuracy among 32 streaming models**. That ranking is attributed to xAI’s account of AA; this article has not independently verified the live board. This is a transcription model, not a chat model, so text-arena Elo does not apply.

## Sources

- [xAI: Introducing Grok Voice Transcribe 2.0 (September 18, 2026)](https://x.ai/news/grok-voice-transcribe-2)
- [xAI docs: Speech to Text (updated October 3, 2026)](https://docs.x.ai/developers/models/speech-to-text)