Bhashini

by Government of India (Digital India Bhashini Division)

Government of India's national language platform — public ASR APIs for 22 official languages.

TL;DR

Government of India's national language platform — public ASR APIs for 22 official languages.

Best for public-sector and accessibility projects that need Indian-language speech as a national-utility API. Pricing: free for non-commercial; commercial tiers TBD.

Category
Transcription APIs
License
—
Stars
—
Last push
—
Pricing
free for non-commercial; commercial tiers TBD
Platforms
Web, Android, iOS

What it is

Bhashini is the Indian government's flagship language-technology mission, aggregating models from AI4Bharat, IIT Bombay, IIIT Hyderabad and others behind a unified API gateway (ULCA). The speech-to-text endpoints cover the 22 scheduled languages and are positioned as digital public infrastructure. Strong fit for civic-tech, accessibility, and any project where a sovereign Indian model is a hard requirement. Best fit when the buyer is public-sector and accessibility projects that need indian-language speech as a national-utility api. The honest caveat: service availability and slas depend on a government platform; quality varies by language. Developer-grade API with self-serve signup; validate accuracy on representative audio for the target dialect before committing volume.

Best for: Public-sector and accessibility projects that need Indian-language speech as a national-utility API.
Watch out for: Service availability and SLAs depend on a government platform; quality varies by language.

Install / use

bhashini.gov.in — register on the ULCA platform

Features

Speaker diarizationNo
Word-level timestampsNo
Streaming / real-timeYes
Languages supported22
HIPAA eligibleNo

Bhashini vs Whipscribe

FeatureBhashiniWhipscribe
CategoryTranscription APIsTranscription APIs
Pricingfree for non-commercial; commercial tiers TBDfree beta
Speaker diarization—Yes
Word timestamps—Yes
StreamingYesNo
Languages2299
PlatformsWeb, Android, iOSWeb, API, MCP

Alternatives to Bhashini

OpenAI Whisper API
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AssemblyAI
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Universal-2 model + diarization, PII redaction, topic detection, summarization.

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Deepgram
Deepgram

Nova-2 model, excellent streaming, strong at conversational audio.

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Whipscribe is a managed faster-whisper + whisperX service. If you want transcripts without running infrastructure, paste a URL or drop a file in the form below — you'll have a transcript in seconds.