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whisper.cpp

C/C++ port of OpenAI Whisper running on CPU, Metal, Core ML, CUDA and Vulkan

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What whisper.cpp does

  • C/C++ port of OpenAI Whisper running on CPU, Metal, Core ML, CUDA and Vulkan
  • Runs on phones, Raspberry Pi and browsers via WASM
  • MIT licensed

whisper.cpp — straight answers

What is whisper.cpp?

whisper.cpp is listed under Speech & Transcription Engines, in the AI Models & Local Execution category on Flocci AI Tools. C/C++ port of OpenAI Whisper running on CPU, Metal, Core ML, CUDA and Vulkan. It is free, with no paid plan attached, and it lives at github.com.

Is whisper.cpp free?

whisper.cpp is listed as fully free — there is no paid tier attached to it in the catalog. That makes it one of the 397 entries on Flocci AI Tools with no upgrade path built in.

Can I use whisper.cpp in a browser, or is there an app?

whisper.cpp needs to be installed or self-hosted — it doesn't run in a browser tab. It is available on the command line, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, the web and self-hosting.

What can whisper.cpp do?

whisper.cpp does 3 things the catalog singles out: C/c++ port of openai whisper running on cpu, metal, core ml, cuda and vulkan; runs on phones, raspberry pi and browsers via wasm; mit licensed.

What is the best free alternative to whisper.cpp?

NVIDIA Canary-Qwen 2.5B is the closest free alternative: it sits in the same Speech & Transcription Engines sub-category and is free. NVIDIA Parakeet, sherpa-onnx and faster-whisper also start free. The full list is on the alternatives page.

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whisper.cpp alternatives

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OpenAI Whisper

Speech & Transcription Engines
free
  • Open-source speech-to-text, run locally free
  • 99+ languages and translation
  • Robust to accents and noise
  • Powers countless apps
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Deepgram

Speech & Transcription Engines
freemium
  • Fast, accurate speech-to-text API
  • Real-time streaming and diarization
  • Voice-agent building blocks
  • Free credits to start
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AssemblyAI

Speech & Transcription Engines
freemium
  • Speech-to-text with audio intelligence
  • Summaries, topics and sentiment
  • Speaker diarization
  • Free tier for developers
Visit

NVIDIA Parakeet

Speech & Transcription Engines
free
  • Tops the Hugging Face Open ASR Leaderboard with 6.05% average WER at 0.6B params
  • CC-BY-4.0 license, free for commercial and non-commercial use
  • RTFx ~3,386 — extremely fast inference relative to accuracy
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Mistral Voxtral

Speech & Transcription Engines
freemium
  • Apache 2.0 open-weight models (24B and 3B) downloadable from Hugging Face
  • Built-in Q&A/summarization over audio, not just raw transcription
  • Function-calling directly from voice input for agent workflows
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Speechmatics

Speech & Transcription Engines
freemium
  • Free starting credit with no card required, 56+ language support
  • Model-training discount program cuts costs 33% for data-sharing customers
  • On-premises/VPC deployment for privacy-sensitive enterprise use
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Head-to-head comparisons

whisper.cpp vs OpenAI Whisperwhisper.cpp vs Deepgramwhisper.cpp vs AssemblyAIwhisper.cpp vs NVIDIA Parakeetwhisper.cpp vs Mistral Voxtralwhisper.cpp vs Speechmatics