Short answer: an EU startup should choose the speech-to-text API with the lowest invoiced cost per accepted minute, not the lowest number on a public rate card.
That answer is less tidy than a four-column price comparison. It is also the only comparison I would trust. A posted rate does not tell me whether a transcript passes the product's quality bar, whether retries multiply spend, or whether the approved data-handling setup is the one being priced. I want a test I can rerun, a bill I can reconcile, and one thin application contract. I don't want a spreadsheet pretending those details are equal.
The deciding constraint is acceptance. Price comes later.
Can an EU startup find the cheapest speech-to-text API from per-minute pricing?
No. Per-minute pricing can identify candidates for a test, but it cannot identify the cheapest deployable choice by itself. The useful denominator is accepted source minutes: audio minutes that produce text good enough for the actual task under the deployment and data-handling setup the team has approved.
