frBest local speech-to-text models for French
22 of the 26 reviewed local speech-to-text models explicitly list French. For long recordings on a mid-range NVIDIA GPU the matcher's first pick is Whisper turbo; for live transcription it is Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B; for meetings with speaker labels it is VibeVoice-ASR 7B. 5 models offer native streaming, 3 native speaker diarization and 18 have a permissive license.
Top matches by setup
Computed with the same deterministic matcher as the homepage, restricted to models whose official source lists French. To keep the shortlist useful, each row shows the best-ranked model from three different families (for example, only one Whisper size). Scores are decision guidance, not accuracy claims.
| Setup | #1 | #2 | #3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Long recordings, 8–12 GB NVIDIA GPU, balanced | Whisper turbo 79/100 · Strong fit | Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 79/100 · Strong fit | Orukeet 79/100 · Strong fit |
| Live transcription (native streaming, speed first) | Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B 91/100 · Excellent fit | Voxtral Mini 4B Realtime 2602 86/100 · Excellent fit | VibeVoice-ASR Streaming 1.5B 83/100 · Strong fit |
| Meetings with speaker labels (diarization + timestamps) | VibeVoice-ASR 7B 86/100 · Excellent fit | Whisper medium 84/100 · Strong fit | Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 84/100 · Strong fit |
| Subtitles with timing, accuracy first | Whisper medium 87/100 · Excellent fit | Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 83/100 · Strong fit | Orukeet 83/100 · Strong fit |
| CPU-only machine, low memory use | VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet 78/100 · Strong fit | Parakeet Redux 78/100 · Strong fit | Whisper tiny 74/100 · Strong fit |
Re-rank for your setup
Change hardware, workload and requirements to re-rank all 22 French-capable models in your browser.
Choose by requirement
- Live captions and voice input
- Native streaming: Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B, VibeVoice-ASR Streaming 1.5B, Voxtral Mini 4B Realtime 2602, VibeVoice-ASR-Streaming-7B and Whistle. Everything else needs a chunking runtime, which adds latency.
- Speaker-labelled meetings
- Native diarization: VibeVoice-ASR 7B, VibeVoice-ASR Streaming 1.5B and VibeVoice-ASR-Streaming-7B. Other models need a separate diarization pipeline.
- Commercial products
- Permissive licenses: Whisper (tiny, base, small, medium, turbo), Qwen3-ASR 0.6B, Qwen3-ASR 1.7B, Omnilingual ASR CTC 300M, Cohere Transcribe 03-2026, VibeVoice-ASR 7B, VibeVoice-ASR Streaming 1.5B, VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet, Voxtral Mini 4B Realtime 2602, Granite Speech 5.0 2B, Granite Speech 5.0 470M TurboCTC, VibeVoice-ASR-Streaming-7B, Whistle and Jais-ASR. 4 other models carry attribution, ShareAlike or custom terms.
- CPU-only or low-power machines
- Rated 4/5 or better for CPU-only use: Whisper tiny, Whisper base, Whisper small, VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet, Granite Speech 5.0 470M TurboCTC, Parakeet Redux and Whistle.
All 22 models that list French
| Model | Streaming | Timestamps | Diarization | License | CPU · NVIDIA fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cohere Transcribe 03-2026 Cohere Labs · 2B | No | Limited | No | Apache-2.0 Permissive | 1/5 · 5/5 |
| Granite Speech 5.0 2B IBM · 2B | No | No | No | Apache-2.0 Permissive | 2/5 · 5/5 |
| Granite Speech 5.0 470M TurboCTC IBM · 470M | No | No | No | Apache-2.0 Permissive | 4/5 · 4/5 |
| Jais-ASR IFM · 5.7B total | No | No | No | Apache-2.0 Permissive | 1/5 · 4/5 |
| Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B NVIDIA · 600M | Native | Limited | No | OpenMDW-1.1 Custom terms | 2/5 · 5/5 |
| Omnilingual ASR CTC 300M Meta AI · 325M | No | Limited | No | Apache-2.0 Permissive | 3/5 · 5/5 |
| Orukeet Oruk AI · 627M | No | Yes | No | CC BY-SA 4.0 Attribution + ShareAlike | 3/5 · 5/5 |
| Parakeet Redux Moondream · 1.58-bit Parakeet 0.6B (178 MB) | No | No | No | CC BY 4.0 Attribution required | 5/5 · 3/5 |
| Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 NVIDIA · 600M | Via runtime | Yes | No | CC BY 4.0 Attribution required | 2/5 · 5/5 |
| Qwen3-ASR 0.6B Qwen · 0.6B | Via runtime | Separate aligner | No | Apache-2.0 Permissive | 2/5 · 5/5 |
| Qwen3-ASR 1.7B Qwen · 1.7B | Via runtime | Separate aligner | No | Apache-2.0 Permissive | 1/5 · 5/5 |
| VibeVoice-ASR 7B Microsoft · 9B total | No | Yes | Yes | MIT Permissive | 1/5 · 4/5 |
| VibeVoice-ASR Streaming 1.5B Microsoft · 3B total | Native | Limited | Yes | MIT Permissive | 1/5 · 4/5 |
| VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet Microsoft · 0.3B quantized | Via runtime | Limited | No | MIT Permissive | 5/5 · 3/5 |
| VibeVoice-ASR-Streaming-7B Microsoft · 9B total | Native | Limited | Yes | MIT Permissive | 1/5 · 4/5 |
| Voxtral Mini 4B Realtime 2602 Mistral AI · 4B | Native | Limited | No | Apache-2.0 Permissive | 1/5 · 5/5 |
| Whisper base OpenAI · 74M | Via runtime | Yes | No | MIT Permissive | 5/5 · 4/5 |
| Whisper medium OpenAI · 769M | Via runtime | Yes | No | MIT Permissive | 2/5 · 5/5 |
| Whisper small OpenAI · 244M | Via runtime | Yes | No | MIT Permissive | 4/5 · 5/5 |
| Whisper tiny OpenAI · 39M | Via runtime | Yes | No | MIT Permissive | 5/5 · 4/5 |
| Whisper turbo OpenAI · 809M | Via runtime | Yes | No | MIT Permissive | 2/5 · 5/5 |
| Whistle Cactus Compute · 16.9 MB file (parameters not stated) | Native | Yes | No | Apache-2.0 Permissive | 5/5 · 2/5 |
Multilingual models that do not list French
Fun-ASR-MLT-Nano-2512 is multilingual but does not list French in the reviewed official source, so the matcher does not recommend it for this language.
Common questions
What is the best local speech-to-text model for French?
There is no single winner; it depends on the workload. In the matcher, Whisper turbo leads for long recordings on a mid-range GPU, VibeVoice-ASR 7B for meetings with speaker labels and VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet for CPU-only machines. Benchmark the top two or three on your own French audio before deciding.
Is there an offline French model with real-time streaming?
Yes. Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B, VibeVoice-ASR Streaming 1.5B, Voxtral Mini 4B Realtime 2602, VibeVoice-ASR-Streaming-7B and Whistle list French and have a native streaming architecture. Measure end-to-end latency on your hardware.
Does Whisper support French?
Yes. All Whisper sizes list French in the official tokenizer language list. Smaller sizes trade accuracy for speed; Whisper turbo is the usual starting point on a GPU.
Which models do not support French?
Among multilingual models, Fun-ASR-MLT-Nano-2512 do not list French in their reviewed sources. English-only models are also excluded.
Related
- Language support matrix for all 104 languages
- Best local speech-to-text models for multilingual use
- Measure French transcripts with the WER calculator
- Compare the top three side by side
Generated from the reviewed model database (latest review November 3, 2026). "Lists French" means the model's official source explicitly names the language; it does not guarantee equal accuracy across languages.