WhisperLive
by Collabora
Real-time Whisper transcription over WebSockets.
TL;DR
Real-time Whisper transcription over WebSockets.
Best for live captioning, meeting bots, low-latency voice agents on self-hosted GPU. Pricing: free.
Category
Open source
License
—
Stars
—
Last push
—
Pricing
free
Platforms
Linux, macOS, Docker
What it is
Collabora's WebSocket server that pipes microphone audio into faster-whisper with a VAD + streaming decoder. Includes browser, Python, and CLI clients. MIT.
Best for: Live captioning, meeting bots, low-latency voice agents on self-hosted GPU.
Watch out for: Faster-whisper backend → CTranslate2 GPU only; English latency ~300ms, multilingual slower.
Watch out for: Faster-whisper backend → CTranslate2 GPU only; English latency ~300ms, multilingual slower.
Install / use
git clone https://github.com/collabora/WhisperLive
Features
| Speaker diarization | No |
| Word-level timestamps | Yes |
| Streaming / real-time | Yes |
| Languages supported | 99 |
| HIPAA eligible | No |
WhisperLive vs Whipscribe
| Feature | WhisperLive | Whipscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Open source | Transcription APIs |
| Pricing | free | free beta |
| Speaker diarization | No | Yes |
| Word timestamps | Yes | Yes |
| Streaming | Yes | No |
| Languages | 99 | 99 |
| Platforms | Linux, macOS, Docker | Web, API, MCP |
Alternatives to WhisperLive
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.