ElevenLabs STT | LiveKit Documentation

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Overview

ElevenLabs speech-to-text is available in LiveKit Agents through LiveKit Inference and the ElevenLabs plugin. With LiveKit Inference, your agent runs on LiveKit's infrastructure to minimize latency. No separate provider API key is required, and usage and rate limits are managed through LiveKit Cloud. Use the plugin instead if you want to manage your own billing and rate limits. Pricing for LiveKit Inference is available on the pricing page.

LiveKit Inference

Use LiveKit Inference to access ElevenLabs STT without a separate ElevenLabs API key.

Model name	Model ID	Languages
Scribe v2 Realtime	elevenlabs/scribe_v2_realtime	afaframamhararaasasmazazjbebelbgbulbnbenbsbosmymyacacatcscesnynyacycymdadandedeuelellenengesspaetestfafasfffulfifinfrfragagleglglglglugkakatgugujhahauhehebhihinhrhrvhuhunhyhyeidindigiboisislititajajpnjvjavkkkazkmkhmknkankokorkukurkykirlbltzlnlinlolaoltlitlvlavmimrimkmkdmlmalmnmonmrmarmsmsamtmltnenepnlnldnonorocociororipapanplpolpspusptporroronrurussrsrpsdsndskslkslslvsnsnasosomsvsweswswatatamteteltgtgkththatrturukukrururduzuzbviviewowolxhxhozhzhozuzulastcebfilkealuonsoumbyue

Usage

To use ElevenLabs, use the STT class from the inference module:

from livekit.agents import AgentSession, inference

session = AgentSession(
    stt=inference.STT(
        model="elevenlabs/scribe_v2_realtime",
        language="en"
    ),
    # ... tts, stt, vad, turn_handling, etc.
)

import { AgentSession, inference } from '@livekit/agents';

session = new AgentSession({
    stt: new inference.STT({
        model: "elevenlabs/scribe_v2_realtime",
        language: "en"
    }),
    // ... llm, tts, vad, turnHandling, etc.
});

Parameters

model

Required

string

The model to use for the STT.

languageLanguageCode

Language code for the transcription.

extra_kwargsdict

Additional parameters to pass to the ElevenLabs STT API. See model parameters for supported fields.

In Node.js this parameter is called modelOptions.

Model parameters

Pass the following parameters inside extra_kwargs (Python) or modelOptions (Node.js):

Parameter	Type	Notes
`commit_strategy`	`"manual" \| "vad"`	Controls when audio chunks are committed for transcription.
`include_timestamps`	`bool`	Whether to include word-level timestamps in transcription results.
`vad_silence_threshold_secs`	`float`	Duration of silence in seconds that triggers end-of-speech detection.
`vad_threshold`	`float`	Sensitivity threshold for voice activity detection.
`min_speech_duration_ms`	`int`	Minimum duration of speech in milliseconds required to start a transcription segment.
`min_silence_duration_ms`	`int`	Minimum duration of silence in milliseconds required to end a transcription segment.
`language_code`	`str`	BCP-47 language code for transcription. When set, disables automatic language detection.

Multilingual transcription

ElevenLabs Scribe 2 Realtime supports multilingual transcription for over 90 languages with automatic language detection.

String descriptors

As a shortcut, you can also pass a model ID string directly to the stt argument in your AgentSession:

from livekit.agents import AgentSession

session = AgentSession(
    stt="elevenlabs/scribe_v2_realtime:en",
    # ... tts, stt, vad, turn_handling, etc.
)

import { AgentSession } from '@livekit/agents';

session = new AgentSession({
    stt: "elevenlabs/scribe_v2_realtime:en",
    // ... tts, stt, vad, turnHandling, etc.
});

Plugin

LiveKit's plugin support for ElevenLabs lets you connect directly to ElevenLabs' STT API with your own API key. For Node.js, use LiveKit Inference instead.

Available in

Python

Installation

Install the plugin from PyPI:

uv add "livekit-agents[elevenlabs]~=1.4"

Authentication

The ElevenLabs plugin requires an ElevenLabs API key.

Set ELEVEN_API_KEY in your .env file.

Usage

Use ElevenLabs STT in an AgentSession or as a standalone transcription service. For example, you can use this STT in the Voice AI quickstart.

from livekit.plugins import elevenlabs

session = AgentSession(
   stt=elevenlabs.STT(
      model_id="scribe_v2_realtime",
   ),
   # ... llm, tts, etc.
)

Parameters

This section describes some of the available parameters. See the plugin reference links in the Additional resources section for more details.

model_idstringDefault: scribe_v2_realtime

The ElevenLabs model to use for speech recognition.

Additional resources

The following resources provide more information about using ElevenLabs with LiveKit Agents.

Python package

Reference GitHub PyPI

ElevenLabs docs

ElevenLabs' full docs site.

Voice AI quickstart

Get started with LiveKit Agents and ElevenLabs.

ElevenLabs TTS

Guide to the ElevenLabs TTS plugin with LiveKit Agents.