Montreal Forced Aligner
by MontrealCorpusTools
Word-level alignment via Kaldi for 100+ languages.
TL;DR
Word-level alignment via Kaldi for 100+ languages.
Best for linguists + TTS data prep needing phoneme-level alignments. Pricing: free.
Category
Open source
License
—
Stars
—
Last push
—
Pricing
free
Platforms
Linux, macOS, Windows
What it is
The standard tool for forced alignment in academic linguistics. MIT.
Best for: Linguists + TTS data prep needing phoneme-level alignments.
Watch out for: Not for free-form transcription; needs text + audio + pron dict.
Watch out for: Not for free-form transcription; needs text + audio + pron dict.
Install / use
conda install -c conda-forge montreal-forced-aligner
Features
| Speaker diarization | No |
| Word-level timestamps | Yes |
| Streaming / real-time | No |
| Languages supported | 100 |
| HIPAA eligible | No |
Montreal Forced Aligner vs Whipscribe
| Feature | Montreal Forced Aligner | Whipscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Open source | Transcription APIs |
| Pricing | free | free beta |
| Speaker diarization | No | Yes |
| Word timestamps | Yes | Yes |
| Streaming | No | No |
| Languages | 100 | 99 |
| Platforms | Linux, macOS, Windows | Web, API, MCP |
Alternatives to Montreal Forced Aligner
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.