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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Port of OpenAI's Whisper model in C/C++

Hi HN, OpenAI recently released a model for automatic speech recognition called Whisper [0]. I decided to reimplement the inference of the model from scratch using C/C++. To achieve this I implemented a minimalistic tensor library in C and ported the high-level architecture of the model in C++. The entire code is less than 8000 lines of code and is contained in just 2 source files without any third-party dependencies. The Github project is here: https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp With this implementation I can very easily build and run the model - “make…

Whisper.cpp is a C/C++ implementation of OpenAI's Whisper automatic speech recognition model. It enables developers to run speech-to-text inference with minimal dependencies—just two source files totaling under 8,000… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Port of OpenAI's Whisper model in C/C++ launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    This project is a Windows port of the whisper.cpp implementation: https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp Which in turn is a C++ port of OpenAI's Whisper automatic speech recognition (ASR) model: https://github.com/openai/whisper The implementation has no dependencies, usually much faster than realtime, and should hopefully work on most Windows computers in the world.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    A neural net for speech recognition

    2022 · openai.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Build Powerful Voice Agents

    2025 · openai.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Hey HN! Braden here, creator of Whispering, an open-source speech-to-text app. I really like dictation. For years, I relied on transcription tools that were almost good, but they were all closed-source. Even a lot of them that claimed to be “local” or “on-device” were still black boxes that left me wondering where my audio really went. So I built Whispering. It’s open-source, local-first, and most importantly, transparent with your data. Your data is stored locally on your device, and your audio goes directly from your machine to a local provider (Whisper C++, Speaches, etc.) or your chosen…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    I wanted to share our new speech to text model, and the library to use them effectively. We're a small startup (six people, sub-$100k monthly GPU budget) so I'm proud of the work the team has done to create streaming STT models with lower word-error rates than OpenAI's largest Whisper model. Admittedly Large v3 is a couple of years old, but we're near the top the HF OpenASR leaderboard, even up against Nvidia's Parakeet family. Anyway, I'd love to get feedback on the models and software, and hear about what people might build with it.

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Generate English subtitles for videos in any language

    2022 · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    WhisperFusion builds upon the capabilities of open source tools WhisperLive and WhisperSpeech to provide a seamless conversations with an AI chatbot.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Offline AI Speech to Text Transcription for iOS & macOS

    2025 · whispernotes.app · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Free AI transcription: convert video and audio to text, translate into 120 languages, download SRT, VTT, ASS or TXT, or export the video with subtitles on it.

    2022 · freesubtitles.ai · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Tighter instruction adherence in speech agents

    Feb 2026 · developers.openai.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    A few years ago, right after high school, I decided to try to make a simultaneous translation app for Android as a side project, it took longer than expected (about 2 years) and I had to make a lot of compromises (I had to use Google's API and therefore make users use a developer key because at the time there were no free solutions for speech recognition and translation that had good quality). At the end of university, I decided to pick it up again and finally, using OpenAi's Whisper for speech recognition and Meta's NLLB for translation (with both running locally on the phone), I managed to…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hi HN! Last year the project I launched here got a lot of good feedback on creating speech to speech AI on the ESP32. Recently I revamped the whole stack, iterated on that feedback and made our project fully open-source—all of the client, hardware, firmware code. This Github repo turns an ESP32-S3 into a realtime AI speech companion using the OpenAI Realtime API, Arduino WebSockets, Deno Edge Functions, and a full-stack web interface. You can talk to your own custom AI character, and it responds instantly. I couldn't find a resource that helped set up a reliable, secure websocket (WSS) AI…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    End-to-end Automatic Speech Recognition for Madarian and English in Tensorflow - GitHub - zzw922cn/Automatic_Speech_Recognition: End-to-end Automatic Speech Recognition for Madarian and English in Tensorflow

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    I wanted a voice-to-text app but didn't trust any of the proprietary ones with my privacy. So I decided to see if I could vibe code it with 0 macOS app & Swift experience. It uses a local binary of whisper.cpp (a fast implementation of OpenAI's Whisper voice-to-text model in C++). Github: https://github.com/richardwu/openwhisper I also decided to take this as an opportunity to compare 3 agentic coding harnesses: Cursor w/ Opus 4.6: - Best one-shot UI by far - Didn't get permissioning correct - Had issues making the "Cancel recording" hotkey being turned on all the…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15AM

    Hi all, I’m hacking on new features for the ClickHouse native client and wanted the same “just call the model” ergonomics JavaScript and Python now enjoy. It didn’t exist for modern C++, so I wrote one. ai‑sdk‑cpp (Apache‑2.0) gives you: - Unified calls to OpenAI (GPT‑4o) and Anthropic (Claude 3.5) with a single C++20 API. - Streaming, multi‑turn chat, error handling—all std::optional/std::variant, no macros. - Tool calling (function‑calling) so the model can hit real APIs; sync or async, runs in parallel. The tricky bit: C++ still lacks real reflection, so mapping plain functions →…

    2025 · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Open-source, local-first dictation you can trust

    2025 · epicenter.so · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Welcome to Project S.A.T.U.R.D.A.Y. This is a project that allows anyone to easily build their own self-hosted J.A.R.V.I.S-like voice assistant. In my mind vocal computing is the future of human-computer interaction and by open sourcing this code I hope to expedite us on that path. I have had a blast working on this so far and I'm excited to continue to build with it. It uses whisper.cpp [1], Coqui TTS [2] and OpenAI [3] to do speech-to-text, text-to-text and text-to-speech inference all 100% locally (except for text-to-text). In the future I plan to swap out OpenAI for llama.cpp [4]. It is…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    State-of-the-art (ranked #1 Aug 2022) German Speech Recognition in 284 lines of C++. This is a 100% private 100% offline 100% free CLI tool. - DeutscheKI/tevr-asr-tool

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19
    Voxtral▲201

    Frontier open source speech understanding models

    2025 · mistral.ai · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    High quality text transcription with OpenAI's whisper on Mac

    2023 · goodsnooze.gumroad.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21
    OpenWispr▲190

    100% local open source AI speech-to-text model

    2025 · openwhispr.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    For speech-to-text, large-language-model inference and text-to-speech I created three wrapper libraries in C/C++ (using Whisper.cpp, Llama.cpp and Piper). Follow the URL to see an example that shows how to use these libraries for a speech-to-text, LLM inference, text-to-speech pipeline. Windows and Linux are supported.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Supercharge your transcription workflow using OpenAI Whisper

    2023 · store.getwavery.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    I was laid off recently and, instead of looking for another job right away, I decided to build something I always wanted: a transcription tool that respects user privacy. Existing transcription tools often require internet connectivity, send your private audio to cloud servers, or lock you into monthly subscriptions. I wanted something different—so I built WhisperBuddy, a privacy-first AI transcription app that runs entirely on your machine. WhisperBuddy uses OpenAI’s Whisper model (see: https://github.com/openai/whisper). While the model may not always deliver the…

    2025 · whisperbuddy.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →