paper-qa
by Future-House
RAG over PDFs / transcripts — downstream ASR consumer pattern.
TL;DR
RAG over PDFs / transcripts — downstream ASR consumer pattern.
Best for pipelines that ingest Whisper transcripts into research-grade QA. Pricing: free.
Category
Open source
License
—
Stars
—
Last push
—
Pricing
free
Platforms
Linux, macOS
What it is
A reference RAG pipeline over PDF + transcript corpora. Apache-2.0.
Best for: Pipelines that ingest Whisper transcripts into research-grade QA.
Watch out for: Not an ASR engine.
Watch out for: Not an ASR engine.
Install / use
pip install paper-qa
Features
| Speaker diarization | No |
| Word-level timestamps | Yes |
| Streaming / real-time | No |
| Languages supported | 99 |
| HIPAA eligible | No |
paper-qa vs Whipscribe
| Feature | paper-qa | Whipscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Open source | Transcription APIs |
| Pricing | free | free beta |
| Speaker diarization | No | Yes |
| Word timestamps | Yes | Yes |
| Streaming | No | No |
| Languages | 99 | 99 |
| Platforms | Linux, macOS | Web, API, MCP |
Alternatives to paper-qa
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.