Gemma 4 (Google) vs Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-1
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
Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-1
Microsoft's first in-house speech-recognition model -- launched 2026-04-02. #1 on FLEURS WER overall, #1 by FLEURS WER in 11 of the top 25 global languages. Beats Whisper-large-v3, Scribe v2, GPT-Transcribe, Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite. $0.36/hour of audio on Azure Foundry
| Category | Gemma 4 (Google) | Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-1 |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 7.0 | 6.0 |
| Output Quality | 8.0 | 9.5 |
| Value | 10.0 | 9.0 |
| Features | 8.0 | 7.0 |
| Overall | 8.3 | 7.9 |
Pricing Comparison
| Feature | Gemma 4 (Google) | Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-1 |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes |
| Starting Price | $0 | $0.36 |
Benchmark Head-to-Head
Gemma 4 31B benchmarks — Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-1 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...
- ✓Easier to use (7 vs 6)
- ✓Better value for money (10/10)
- ✓More features (8 vs 7)
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 Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-1 if...
- ✓Higher output quality (9.5 vs 8)
Developers and enterprises who need best-in-class multilingual speech-to-text for high-volume use cases (meeting recording pipelines, call-center transcription, accessibility captioning at scale, multilingual audio indexing). Especially relevant for Azure shops already on Microsoft infrastructure.
Visit Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-1Our Verdict
Gemma 4 (Google) edges out Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-1 with a 8.3 vs 7.9 overall score. Both are solid picks, but Gemma 4 (Google) has the advantage in value.