alphacep/vosk-api

Project overview

alphacep/vosk-api is a self-hosted, offline speech recognition library designed for developers who need continuous large vocabulary transcription across 20+ languages without relying on cloud services. It provides compact 50 MB models, zero-latency streaming APIs, and speaker identification, running locally on devices from Raspberry Pi to large clusters.

Project type

Audio & Speech · Infrastructure

Use cases

Meeting Notes · Audio & Speech · Automation

Deployment

Refer to project documentation

License

Apache-2.0

Best for

• Developers and AI engineers who need to integrate offline speech recognition into applications using a programming library.
• Operations teams deploying local speech transcription on resource-constrained devices using compact 50 MB models.

Key capabilities

• Provides continuous large vocabulary speech recognition offline without an internet connection.
• Provides zero-latency response with a streaming API for real-time transcription.
• Identifies speakers during speech recognition.
• Allows vocabulary to be reconfigured for specific use cases.
• Supports speech recognition for 20+ languages and dialects.
• Small 50 MB models suitable for resource-constrained devices.
• Scales from Raspberry Pi and Android smartphones to big clusters.

Limitations and risks

• Users must separately obtain and configure Vosk models for speech recognition.
• Deployment complexity varies significantly across target platforms, ranging from Raspberry Pi to server clusters.
• Telemetry practices are not documented in the available materials.

Getting started

• Setup requires medium difficulty: developers must install the vosk-api for their target language, download a Vosk model, and use the library API to process the audio stream.

Evidence and sources

• README: Vosk is an offline open source speech recognition toolkit. It enables speech recognition for 20+ languages and dialects - English, Indian English, German, French, Spanish, Portugu…
• GitHub project description: Offline speech recognition API for Android, iOS, Raspberry Pi and servers with Python, Java, C# and Node
• README: Vosk models are small (50 Mb) but provide continuous large vocabulary transcription, zero-latency response with streaming API, reconfigurable vocabulary and speaker identification.

Reviewed at: 2026-07-17T14:43:01Z