Whisper vs Parakeet
Whisper large-v3 and turbo cover 99 languages, with an MIT/Apache license. Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 (NVIDIA, CC-BY-4.0) covers 25 European languages, is 1.3–2.6x smaller, and supports chunked streaming via NeMo. For accuracy we don't compete with the HF Open ASR Leaderboard; check it there.
Side by side
| Whisper large-v3 | Whisper large-v3-turbo | Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organization | OpenAI | OpenAI | NVIDIA |
| Parameters | 1.54B | 809M | 600M |
| License | apache-2.0 source | mit source | cc-by-4.0 source |
| Commercial use | Yes HF card: Apache-2.0; GitHub repo: code and weights MIT | Yes MIT | Yes CC-BY-4.0 (attribution); card: ready for commercial/non-commercial use |
| Stated memory | ~10 GB VRAM | ~6 GB VRAM | At least 2 GB RAM to load |
| Runs on CPU | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Streaming | No | No | Yes |
| Languages | 99 languages | 99 languages | 25 languages |
| Our fastest CPU result | benchmark pending | benchmark pending | benchmark pending |
| Pi 5 | Won't fit (stated memory) | Unknown | Unknown |
| CPU only | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Apple Silicon | Fits stated memory | Sourced statement | Fits stated memory |
| 8 GB GPU | Won't fit (stated memory) | Fits stated memory | Fits stated memory |
| 12–16 GB GPU | Fits stated memory | Fits stated memory | Fits stated memory |
| 24 GB+ GPU | Fits stated memory | Fits stated memory | Fits stated memory |
Each fact is sourced on the model's page. "Unknown" means the source doesn't say. Accuracy: Hugging Face Open ASR Leaderboard.
Key differences (sourced)
- Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3: 600M parameters, at least 2 GB RAM to load, chunked streaming via NeMo script, CC-BY-4.0 (attribution required). source
- Whisper large-v3: ~10 GB VRAM, turbo ~6 GB (OpenAI's PyTorch figures). The 30 s window means streaming needs a wrapper. source
- Accuracy (WER) and speed on datacenter GPUs for both families: see the Open ASR Leaderboard. source
Which should you pick?
- Pick Whisper for broad language coverage (99) or the biggest ecosystem (faster-whisper, whisper.cpp, Home Assistant).
- Pick Parakeet for European languages on NVIDIA hardware with NeMo, or when you need built-in chunked streaming.
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