Comparison

faster-whisper vs whisper.cpp

No leader: the top candidate whisper.cpp has only 0.34 confidence (low), below the 0.35 needed to declare a winner. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
faster-whisper52
whisper.cpp58
Score
vioscaleAI score
faster-whisper52 / 100low · 33%
whisper.cpp58 / 100low · 34%
Pricing
Free tier
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✓
Model
faster-whisperopen_source
whisper.cppopen_source
Price level
faster-whisperfree
whisper.cppfree
Transparent
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✓
Integrations
Count
faster-whisper5
whisper.cpp–
Adoption
Dependent repos
faster-whisper35
whisper.cpp18
Github stars
faster-whisper25,877
whisper.cpp54,417
Activity
Commits last 30d
faster-whisper7
whisper.cpp100
Release
Cadence days
faster-whisper27
whisper.cpp14
History
faster-whisper20 items
whisper.cpp20 items
License
Spdx
faster-whisperMIT
whisper.cppMIT
Language
Primary
faster-whisperPython
whisper.cppC++
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
faster-whisper6 items
whisper.cpp5 items

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for speech to text. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Capabilities
Real time streaming
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp-
Speaker diarization
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp-
Custom vocabulary
faster-whisper-
whisper.cpp-
Fine tuning
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp-
Word timestamps
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✓
Punctuation formatting
faster-whisper-
whisper.cpp-
Pii redaction
faster-whisper-
whisper.cpp-
Vertical model
faster-whisper-
whisper.cpp-
Offline on device
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✓
Open source
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✓

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

faster-whisper

A high-performance implementation of OpenAI's Whisper for converting speech to text, with features for word-level timing and offline processing.

Independently observed

whisper.cpp

An open-source C/C++ implementation that brings OpenAI's Whisper speech recognition to local devices. It executes entirely offline without network connectivity and integrates into various hardware platforms from mobile to specialized computing systems.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

faster-whisper

Open sourceFree tier
as of verify ↗

whisper.cpp

Open sourceFree tier
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
iOS
faster-whisper✗
whisper.cpp✓
macOS
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✗
Windows
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✗
Linux
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✓
CLI
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✓
Deployment
Self-hosted
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✓
On-premise
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✓
Air-gapped
faster-whisper✓
whisper.cpp✗

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

faster-whisper

15 total
  • OpenAI API
  • OpenAI SDK
  • OpenAI CLI
  • HomeAssistant
  • Konele
  • Docker
  • AzureML
  • FastAPI
  • OpenAI SDKs/CLI
  • pyannote.audio
  • pyannote.ai
  • OpenAI SDK/CLI
  • Azure ML
  • Transformers library
  • OpenAI
Independently observed

whisper.cpp

Not documented yet.

Still deciding?

faster-whisper or whisper.cpp: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.