whatmodel.sh · find the best speech-to-text models you can run

Best speech-to-text models to run locally on a 2GB Mac

A leaderboard of the best speech-to-text models you can run locally on a Mac with 2GB of memory. Granite Speech 5.0 470M TurboCTC NC is #1 right now, followed by Parakeet Unified EN 0.6B and Parakeet Ultra. Models are ranked by one score that combines 87 published benchmarks. Each model shows the download that fits and the command to run it.

40 models · 87 benchmarks · updated
Filter by your hardware and budget → ~1GB fast · local only · reset
ram[2][4][8][16][24][32][48][64][96][128][192][256]
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GB
gpu[apple silicon][graphics card][unified memory][none]
price[local][$0.001][$0.002][$0.005][$0.01][any]max per audio min
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task[all tasks][long-form transcription][multilingual transcription]
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Run curl "whatmodel.sh/stt?ram=2&gpu=apple&max=0"to get this list in your terminal (add &format=json for agents).

Score vs release date

#modelscore↓where↓RAM↓speed↓get itsources
#modelscore↓where↓RAM↓speed↓get itsources
15Granite Speech 5.0 470M TurboCTC NC · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) IBM64±4*local~0.5GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
37Parakeet Unified EN 0.6B · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) NVIDIA60±4*local~0.7GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
51Parakeet Ultra · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) Moondream59±3local~0.7GBhow to run › Moondream parakeet-ultra and parakeet-redux model cards (Benchmarks sections)transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
63Fun-ASR-MLT-Nano-2512 · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) Alibaba (FunAudioLLM)57±4local~0.9GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
70Orukeet · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) Oruk AI57±4*local~0.7GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
71Parakeet Redux · ternary 1.58-bit (Photon) Moondream57±3local~0.2GBhow to run › Moondream parakeet-ultra and parakeet-redux model cards (Benchmarks sections)Phonon-2 model card
73Phonon-2 · 2-bit Fermion Research56±7*†local~0.7GBhow to run › Phonon-2 model card
74Parakeet TDT-CTC 1.1B · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) NVIDIA56±4*local~1.3GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
81Fun-ASR-Nano-2512 · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) Alibaba (FunAudioLLM)55±3local~0.9GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsmicrosoft/VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet model card (Accuracy table)
94MOSS-Transcribe-Diarize 0.9B · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) OpenMOSS54±4local~1GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
99Parakeet primeline (German) · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) primeLine52±4*local~0.7GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
117Multitalker Parakeet Streaming 0.6B v1 · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) NVIDIA50±4*local~0.9GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
121Nemotron Speech Streaming EN 0.6B · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) NVIDIA49±4*local~0.7GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
125Distil-Whisper distil-small.en · fp16 Hugging Face (Distil-Whisper)48±4*local~0.9GBhow to run › Open ASR Leaderboardhuggingface/distil-whisper README (Distil-Whisper headline WER table)
131ESPnet E-Branchformer (no LM) · fp32 (espnet 202610.post2 + espnet_model_zoo 0.1.11) ESPnet46±4*†local~0.8GBhow to run › ESPnet LibriSpeech ASR recipe results (pinned September 2026)
132ESPnet Multiconvformer (no LM) · fp32 (espnet 202610.post2 + espnet_model_zoo 0.1.11) ESPnet46±4*†local~0.8GBhow to run › ESPnet LibriSpeech ASR recipe results (pinned September 2026)
134Moonshine Streaming Small · fp32 Useful Sensors (Moonshine AI)46±3local~1.2GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsOpen ASR LeaderboardPicovoice speech-to-text-benchmark · English batch-engine WER (README)
136SenseVoice Small · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) Alibaba (FunAudioLLM)45±3local~0.3GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsmicrosoft/VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet model card (Accuracy table)
139Omnilingual ASR CTC 300M · bf16 Meta45±2local~1.3GBhow to run › Open ASR LeaderboardOmnilingual ASR: Open-Source Multilingual Speech Recognition for 1600+ Languages (arXiv:2511.09690v1)Open Universal Arabic ASR Leaderboard (Elm Research Center)
141Whisper small.en · fp16 OpenAI44±3local~1.1GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsOpen ASR LeaderboardPicovoice speech-to-text-benchmark · English batch-engine WER (README)AfriSpeech-200 (arXiv:2310.00274v1) · zero-shot WER of open ASR models on African-accented EnglishSpeech Robust Bench (arXiv:2403.07937v3) · clean-speech WER of 25+ open ASR models
142ESPnet Branchformer 18-layer (70 epochs, no LM) · fp32 (espnet 202610.post2 + espnet_model_zoo 0.1.11) ESPnet44±4*†local~0.7GBhow to run › ESPnet LibriSpeech ASR recipe results (pinned September 2026)
143Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B · q8_0-gguf (NVIDIA NeMo-Speech.cpp) NVIDIA43±3local~0.7GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsVibeVoice-ASR-Streaming Technical Report (arXiv:2609.02812v2), Table 3 single-speaker recognitionPicovoice speech-to-text-benchmark · English batch-engine WER (README)Danish Speech-to-Text Leaderboard (RyeAI) · results datasetOpen Universal Arabic ASR Leaderboard (Elm Research Center)
145Omnilingual ASR CTC 300M v2 · bf16 Meta43±3*local~1.3GBhow to run › Open ASR Leaderboard
147ESPnet Conformer 2020 + RNN LM · fp32 (espnet 202610.post2 + espnet_model_zoo 0.1.11) ESPnet43±4*†local~1GBhow to run › ESPnet LibriSpeech ASR recipe results (pinned September 2026)
149GigaAM Multilingual (CTC 220M) · fp32 (transformers remote code) Sber42±7*†local~0.9GBhow to run › ai-sage/GigaAM-Multilingual model card (Model Performance table)
150ESPnet Transformer 18-layer + RNN LM · fp32 (espnet 202610.post2 + espnet_model_zoo 0.1.11) ESPnet41±4*†local~1GBhow to run › ESPnet LibriSpeech ASR recipe results (pinned September 2026)
151ABR asr-19m-v2-en · fp32 TorchScript (transformers remote code @ dab6545) Applied Brain Research41±5*local~0.1GBhow to run › Open ASR Leaderboard
156Whisper small · fp16 OpenAI39±2local~1.1GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsOmnilingual ASR: Open-Source Multilingual Speech Recognition for 1600+ Languages (arXiv:2511.09690v1)verliapp/stt-benchmark · independent STT accuracy benchmarkPESTE · Persian Speech to Text benchmark (fleurs-fa-ir-v1)Open ASR Leaderboard – Chilean Spanish (idsudd / Alonso Astroza)German dialect ASR Benchmark (Betthupferl; kamaal-08/bavarian-asr-leaderboard)+5
157Moonshine Base · fp32 Useful Sensors (Moonshine AI)38±3local~0.8GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsOpen ASR Leaderboard
158Whisper base.en · fp32 OpenAI35±3local~0.9GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsOpen ASR LeaderboardPicovoice speech-to-text-benchmark · English batch-engine WER (README)Speech Robust Bench (arXiv:2403.07937v3) · clean-speech WER of 25+ open ASR models
160Vosk small en-us 0.15 · kaldi Alpha Cephei (Vosk)31±6local~0.3GBhow to run › Picovoice speech-to-text-benchmark · English batch-engine WER (README)Alpha Cephei Vosk models page (vendor-reported WER for its own Vosk models)
161Moonshine Tiny · fp32 Useful Sensors (Moonshine AI)29±3local~0.6GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsOpen ASR Leaderboard
162Moonshine Streaming Tiny · fp32 Useful Sensors (Moonshine AI)28±3local~0.7GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsOpen ASR LeaderboardPicovoice speech-to-text-benchmark · English batch-engine WER (README)
163Whisper tiny.en · fp32 OpenAI27±3local~0.7GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsOpen ASR LeaderboardPicovoice speech-to-text-benchmark · English batch-engine WER (README)Speech Robust Bench (arXiv:2403.07937v3) · clean-speech WER of 25+ open ASR models
165Whisper base · fp32 OpenAI25±3local~0.9GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsPESTE · Persian Speech to Text benchmark (fleurs-fa-ir-v1)German dialect ASR Benchmark (Betthupferl; kamaal-08/bavarian-asr-leaderboard)Danish Speech-to-Text Leaderboard (RyeAI) · results datasetTurkish ASR Leaderboard (TurkASR-Bench, yagmurtuncer)Speech Robust Bench (arXiv:2403.07937v3) · clean-speech WER of 25+ open ASR models
170Whisper tiny · fp32 OpenAI14±3local~0.7GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision portsPESTE · Persian Speech to Text benchmark (fleurs-fa-ir-v1)German dialect ASR Benchmark (Betthupferl; kamaal-08/bavarian-asr-leaderboard)Danish Speech-to-Text Leaderboard (RyeAI) · results datasetTurkish ASR Leaderboard (TurkASR-Bench, yagmurtuncer)Speech Robust Bench (arXiv:2403.07937v3) · clean-speech WER of 25+ open ASR models
175data2vec Audio Base 960h · fp32 Meta4±4local~1GBhow to run › Meta (facebook org) Hugging Face ASR model cards: published LibriSpeech WER for its own checkpointsOpen ASR Leaderboard
176wav2vec 2.0 Base 960h · fp32 Meta2±4local~1GBhow to run › Meta (facebook org) Hugging Face ASR model cards: published LibriSpeech WER for its own checkpointsOpen ASR LeaderboardSpeech Robust Bench (arXiv:2403.07937v3) · clean-speech WER of 25+ open ASR models
178MedASR · q8_0-gguf (transcribe.cpp) Google-14±4*local~0.1GBhow to run › transcribe.cpp model catalog · LibriSpeech test-clean WER of validated full-precision ports
—AuroraASR-1M · fp32 AuroraAI Researchnot scored yetlocal~0.5GBhow to run ›

+ 147 more don't fit your machine or budget · show them

187 of 187 catalogue models listed here · sources and licences

* new or thinly tested: ranked on too few benchmark results · † only the maker’s own numbers so far · ~RAM is estimated; full context may need more memory

40 models · 87 benchmarks · updated