Head to head · Audio · updated Oct 15, 2026
Whisper vs Deepgram
Whisper scores 84 to Deepgram's 19 on public evidence for speech-to-text transcription, and they rank #1 and #3 there. Both are free to start. Numbers below are the same public signals the ranking uses, recomputed nightly — nothing here is sponsored.
Whisper
OpenAI's open-source speech-recognition model that transcribes and translates audio in dozens of languages, locally or via API.
+ Free, runs fully offline, and remains the accuracy benchmark that most commercial transcription services are measured against.
− No speaker diarization out of the box, it hallucinates text during silence, and large models are slow without a GPU.
Deepgram
A speech-to-text and text-to-speech API built for low-latency streaming at scale.
+ Among the fastest real-time transcription APIs available, with diarization and keyword boosting built in.
− Developer-only; there is no end-user app, and accuracy on heavily accented speech trails Whisper-class models.
Side by side
public evidence| Whisper | Deepgram | |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence score / 100 | 84 | 19 |
| GitHub stars | 110,580 | closed source |
| Hacker News stories, 30d | 15 | 2 |
| Release-feed mentions, 30d | 1 | 0 |
| Last activity | 0 days ago | – |
| Pricing | Open source · Free (MIT); hosted API $0.006/min | Free tier · $200 free credit; Nova STT from about $0.0043/min |
| Platforms | cli, api, mac, windows, linux | api |
| Maker | OpenAI | Deepgram |
Which one?
Pick Whisper if
- you want the stronger public evidence (84 vs 19)
- you want open source — self-host it, read it, fork it
- you need it on cli, linux, mac
- a bigger GitHub community matters (110,580 vs 0 stars)
Best for free local transcription.
Pick Deepgram if
Among the fastest real-time transcription APIs available, with diarization and keyword boosting built in.
Best for real-time voice apps.