Azure AI Speech

Azure AI Speech is Microsoft's speech service and the cloud option with the most Arabic surface area. It lists eighteen Arabic locales for transcription, from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to Morocco and Yemen, and the Saudi locale alone gets two extras: post-stream refinement for better final transcripts and the fullest custom-speech options, so you can train it on your own vocabulary and recordings. It is also the only hyperscaler with a Middle East region for speech, UAE North, which lets a GCC organisation keep audio in the region without going on-premises. Microsoft publishes no Arabic error rate, and independent call-centre and dialect tests have placed Azure in the 45% to 70% range, so the locale list should not be mistaken for dialect-level accuracy. Five audio hours a month are free; paid prices are on Microsoft's pricing page.