If you're searching for speech-to-text in Latvian, two names keep coming up: Hugo.gov.lv and Tilde. That's not an accident — both are solid, purpose-built tools, and this post is not an attempt to talk you out of using either of them. If Latvian is the only language you need, one of the two probably covers you already.
We built Raxti for a different, narrower gap: people juggling more than one language, or who need the output shaped a particular way — subtitles for a video, a transcript from a YouTube link, a summary written to a custom prompt. Here's an honest look at all three, so you can pick the right one instead of defaulting to whichever you heard of first.
Hugo.gov.lv — free, simple, Latvian only
Hugo.gov.lv is a free transcription tool from the Latvian government's language technology platform. You dictate straight into the browser or upload an audio/video file — up to an hour long and 1 GB — and get text back. Files are automatically deleted after 72 hours.
It does exactly what it sets out to do, at no cost, for Latvian. There's no summary, no action items, no subtitle export, and no support for other languages — it isn't trying to be more than a straightforward dictation and transcription tool, and for a lot of people that's plenty.
Best fit: a one-off Latvian recording — a lecture, a meeting, a voice memo — where you just want the text and don't need anything done with it afterward.
Tilde — enterprise-grade, 29 languages
Tilde's transcription tool is aimed squarely at organizations: speaker-separated transcripts, subtitle files with timestamps, AI-generated summaries, API access, and deployment options that range from a EU-based SaaS platform to a private cloud or fully on-premises setup for teams with strict data-handling requirements. They publish a 94% accuracy figure and support 29 languages, including Latvian, with pricing built for regular, ongoing use — plans start at €6.99/month for 60 minutes, scaling up to custom enterprise contracts with a dedicated account manager.
Best fit: a business or public institution that transcribes regularly, needs data to stay in the EU or on their own infrastructure, wants API integration into existing systems, or handles meetings across the languages Tilde supports.
What an independent benchmark found
This isn't just a hunch. In March 2026, Latvian blogger Aivis Brutans ran an independent word-error-rate test across a dozen transcription tools, using a real Latvian audio recording and the JiWER library to score each result. ElevenLabs and Soniox came out on top; Tilde Transcribe landed in the top five at roughly 4.9% WER, despite having no way to define custom terms; Hugo.lv scored around 10.8% WER. TurboScribe — built on the same OpenAI Whisper model family Raxti runs on — was among the weakest performers for Latvian specifically, and ChatGPT and Claude.ai couldn't produce a usable transcript at all.
That test is a useful reality check on what Raxti is and isn't good for: for Latvian audio specifically, a tool trained on Baltic languages, or one of the stronger commercial speech APIs, will likely out-transcribe a general-purpose Whisper-based tool like ours.
So where does Raxti fit?
We're not trying to out-transcribe either of these tools in Latvian — a model trained specifically on Baltic languages may well handle Latvian better than a general-purpose one. Raxti exists for what's outside that scope:
- 105 languages, not 1 or 29. Raxti runs on OpenAI's Whisper, which covers everything from Arabic and Hindi to Japanese and Swahili — useful if your recordings aren't consistently in Latvian or a handful of EU languages, or you deal with multilingual meetings, calls, or interviews.
- Custom prompts. Instead of a fixed summary template, you can tell Raxti exactly how to shape the output — a different structure, a specific focus, a different tone — per recording.
- SRT subtitles for content creators. Upload your video's audio, download a timestamped .srt file, and drop it straight into CapCut, Premiere, or DaVinci Resolve — built for TikTok and Instagram captioning workflows, not just enterprise review documents.
- YouTube transcripts from a URL. Paste a link, get the transcript — no download-then-upload step.
- Pricing built for individuals. A free tier for short files, then plans starting at €2.99/month — priced for a single creator or professional, not a team procurement budget.
The honest recommendation
Need Latvian, want it free, and don't need anything beyond the text itself? Use Hugo.gov.lv. Running a business or institution that transcribes regularly and needs EU/on-prem hosting, speaker separation, or API access? Tilde is built for that. Working across languages, need SRT subtitles for short-form video, want YouTube transcripts, or want control over how your summary reads? That's where Raxti comes in.
All three can be true at once — we'd genuinely rather point you to the right tool than pretend to be the only option.