SentencePiece
by Google
Subword tokenizer used by Whisper, SeamlessM4T, Canary.
TL;DR
Subword tokenizer used by Whisper, SeamlessM4T, Canary.
Best for building/fine-tuning ASR tokenizers without external tools. Pricing: free.
Category
Open source
License
—
Stars
—
Last push
—
Pricing
free
Platforms
Linux, macOS, Windows
What it is
Google's reference subword tokenizer. Apache-2.0.
Best for: Building/fine-tuning ASR tokenizers without external tools.
Watch out for: Bytes-only by default; check sample rate compatibility.
Watch out for: Bytes-only by default; check sample rate compatibility.
Install / use
pip install sentencepiece
Features
| Speaker diarization | No |
| Word-level timestamps | Yes |
| Streaming / real-time | No |
| Languages supported | 99 |
| HIPAA eligible | No |
SentencePiece vs Whipscribe
| Feature | SentencePiece | 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, Windows | Web, API, MCP |
Alternatives to SentencePiece
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.