Audio RAG with 200x cheaper vector DB costs

Melia, an innovative multilingual speech-to-text model, has been introduced, promising to revolutionize speech technology for businesses with a global presence and stringent quality standards. This enterprise-grade solution prioritizes privacy, offering robust security tools and controls to ensure compliance in privacy-critical workflows.

The API is designed to adapt to the nuances of human speech, handling regional accents, multiple speakers, and instances of code-switching, where speakers switch between languages within a single sentence. This adaptability spans 55+ languages, making it an ideal choice for international markets.

The model can power a variety of applications, from live captions and voice agents to meeting notes and contact center analytics. It caters to diverse use cases, from customer service to legal proceedings and healthcare consultations.

For users, the API comes with a generous starting point - $100 in credit, with no need for a credit card. This allows for testing transcription quality and language support before transitioning to a paid plan. Independent testing by Pipecat in August 2026 revealed that Melia achieved the lowest word error rate among 12 services tested, including Deepgram, AWS, and Azure, with a pooled word error rate of 1.07%. This demonstrates Melia's superior performance in speech recognition.

Melia offers flexible deployment options, including cloud, on-premise, and on-device deployment. It is also compliant with industry standards, including ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2 Type II, ensuring the utmost security and data protection for its users.