Transcribe audio
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text
Speech recognition API on Google Cloud that returns transcripts from audio files or live streams.
Methods
| Method | Used for | How |
|---|---|---|
| Application Default Credentials | Client libraries | Libraries look for credentials in defined locations; locally set with gcloud auth application-default login |
| User credentials via gcloud | REST requests from the command line | Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token) |
| Attached service account | Code running on Google Cloud | Credentials of the service account attached to the compute resource |
| Service account impersonation | Local development and testing permissions | Needs the roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator role |
Source8Authentication
Getting access
- Who creates the account
- A person signs in to a Google Cloud account and selects or creates a project; agent sign-up is not stated10
- Where to get a key
- No API key shown; credentials come from IAM (ADC, user or service account) via the
gcloudCLI or the Google Cloud console8 - Other requirements
- A Google Cloud project with billing enabled, and the Speech-to-Text API enabled10
Read from Google Cloud’s own pages on 2026-11-04. Every number links to the page a value came from. For agents, the same facts as markdown: /tools/transcribe-audio/google-cloud-speech-to-text.md