Gemma 4 (Google) vs Grok Speech (STT + TTS APIs)
Which one should you pick? Here's the full breakdown.
Gemma 4 (Google)
Google DeepMind's open-weights model family -- multimodal, 256K context, runs on edge devices
Grok Speech (STT + TTS APIs)
xAI's standalone voice APIs -- launched 2026-04-17. Built on the stack that powers Grok Voice, Tesla vehicles, and Starlink customer support. $0.10/hr STT batch, $4.20 per 1M characters TTS, 25+ languages, word-level timestamps + speaker diarization
| Category | Gemma 4 (Google) | Grok Speech (STT + TTS APIs) |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 7.0 | 7.0 |
| Output Quality | 8.0 | 8.5 |
| Value | 10.0 | 9.0 |
| Features | 8.0 | 8.0 |
| Overall | 8.3 | 8.1 |
Pricing Comparison
| Feature | Gemma 4 (Google) | Grok Speech (STT + TTS APIs) |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Yes | No |
| Starting Price | $0 | $0.10 |
Benchmark Head-to-Head
Gemma 4 31B benchmarks — Grok Speech (STT + TTS APIs) has no published benchmarks
| Benchmark | Description | Score |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU | Knowledge across 57 subjects | 83% |
| GPQA Diamond | Graduate-level science questions | 84.3% |
| AIME 2026 | 89.2% | |
| HumanEval | Python code generation | 85% |
Which Should You Pick?
Pick Gemma 4 (Google) if...
- ✓Better value for money (10/10)
- ✓Has a free tier
Developers and businesses who need a permissively licensed multimodal LLM they can self-host or fine-tune. Especially good for multilingual use cases and on-device deployment.
Visit Gemma 4 (Google)Pick Grok Speech (STT + TTS APIs) if...
Developers building voice agents, real-time transcription tools, accessibility features, or high-volume TTS workloads where the cost per hour of audio actually matters at scale. Strong fit for phone-call and meeting transcription use cases where xAI's published WER advantage (5.0% on phone-call entities vs. ElevenLabs 12.0%) compounds quickly.
Visit Grok Speech (STT + TTS APIs)Our Verdict
Gemma 4 (Google) and Grok Speech (STT + TTS APIs) are extremely close overall. Your choice comes down to specific needs -- Gemma 4 (Google) is better for developers and businesses who need a permissively licensed multimodal llm they can self-host or fine-tune, while Grok Speech (STT + TTS APIs) works best for developers building voice agents, real-time transcription tools, accessibility features, or high-volume tts workloads where the cost per hour of audio actually matters at scale.