HuggingFace Optimum

by Hugging Face

ONNX + TensorRT + OpenVINO acceleration for Transformers ASR models.

TL;DR

ONNX + TensorRT + OpenVINO acceleration for Transformers ASR models.

Best for exporting Whisper / Wav2Vec2 / SeamlessM4T to ONNX/TensorRT/OpenVINO for prod. Pricing: free.

Category
Open source
License
Stars
Last push
Pricing
free
Platforms
Linux, macOS, Windows

What it is

Optimum bridges transformers with hardware acceleration backends and quantization tools. Apache-2.0.

Best for: Exporting Whisper / Wav2Vec2 / SeamlessM4T to ONNX/TensorRT/OpenVINO for prod.
Watch out for: Many models require manual config overrides; quantization not always loss-free.

Install / use

pip install optimum[onnxruntime]

Features

Speaker diarizationNo
Word-level timestampsYes
Streaming / real-timeNo
Languages supported100
HIPAA eligibleNo

HuggingFace Optimum vs Whipscribe

FeatureHuggingFace OptimumWhipscribe
CategoryOpen sourceTranscription APIs
Pricingfreefree beta
Speaker diarizationNoYes
Word timestampsYesYes
StreamingNoNo
Languages10099
PlatformsLinux, macOS, WindowsWeb, API, MCP

Alternatives to HuggingFace Optimum

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.