Language guide · Vietnamese vi

Best local speech-to-text models for Vietnamese

12 of the 26 reviewed local speech-to-text models explicitly list Vietnamese. 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. 1 model offers native streaming, 1 native speaker diarization and 11 have a permissive license.

Top matches by setup

Computed with the same deterministic matcher as the homepage, restricted to models whose official source lists Vietnamese. 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.

Best-ranked model from each of the top three model families, Vietnamese
Setup	#1	#2	#3
Long recordings, 8–12 GB NVIDIA GPU, balanced	Whisper turbo 79/100 · Strong fit	Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B 75/100 · Strong fit	Qwen3-ASR 0.6B 75/100 · Strong fit
Live transcription (native streaming, speed first)	Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B 91/100 · Excellent fit	Qwen3-ASR 0.6B 77/100 · Strong fit	Whisper turbo 76/100 · Strong fit
Meetings with speaker labels (diarization + timestamps)	VibeVoice-ASR 7B 86/100 · Excellent fit	Whisper medium 84/100 · Strong fit	Qwen3-ASR 0.6B 77/100 · Strong fit
Subtitles with timing, accuracy first	Whisper medium 87/100 · Excellent fit	Qwen3-ASR 0.6B 80/100 · Strong fit	VibeVoice-ASR 7B 79/100 · Strong fit
CPU-only machine, low memory use	VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet 78/100 · Strong fit	Whisper tiny 74/100 · Strong fit	Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B 58/100 · Possible fit

Re-rank for your setup

Change hardware, workload and requirements to re-rank all 12 Vietnamese-capable models in your browser.

Choose by requirement

Live captions and voice input: Native streaming: Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B. Everything else needs a chunking runtime, which adds latency.
Speaker-labelled meetings: Native diarization: VibeVoice-ASR 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, Cohere Transcribe 03-2026, VibeVoice-ASR 7B, VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet and Fun-ASR-MLT-Nano-2512. 1 other model carries 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 and VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet.

All 12 models that list Vietnamese

Reviewed local ASR models listing Vietnamese
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
Fun-ASR-MLT-Nano-2512 FunAudioLLM · 800M	Via runtime	No	No	Apache-2.0 Permissive	2/5 · 5/5
Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B NVIDIA · 600M	Native	Limited	No	OpenMDW-1.1 Custom terms	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-BitNet Microsoft · 0.3B quantized	Via runtime	Limited	No	MIT Permissive	5/5 · 3/5
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

Multilingual models that do not list Vietnamese

Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3, Orukeet, Omnilingual ASR CTC 300M, VibeVoice-ASR Streaming 1.5B, Voxtral Mini 4B Realtime 2602, Granite Speech 5.0 2B, Granite Speech 5.0 470M TurboCTC, VibeVoice-ASR-Streaming-7B, Parakeet Redux, Whistle and Jais-ASR are multilingual but do not list Vietnamese in the reviewed official source, so the matcher does not recommend them for this language. Omnilingual ASR documents 1,600+ language-script codes, so check Meta's full list ↗ before ruling it out.

Common questions

What is the best local speech-to-text model for Vietnamese?

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 Vietnamese audio before deciding.

Is there an offline Vietnamese model with real-time streaming?

Yes. Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B lists Vietnamese and has a native streaming architecture. Measure end-to-end latency on your hardware.

Does Whisper support Vietnamese?

Yes. All Whisper sizes list Vietnamese 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 Vietnamese?

Among multilingual models, Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3, Orukeet, Omnilingual ASR CTC 300M, VibeVoice-ASR Streaming 1.5B, Voxtral Mini 4B Realtime 2602, Granite Speech 5.0 2B, Granite Speech 5.0 470M TurboCTC, VibeVoice-ASR-Streaming-7B, Parakeet Redux, Whistle and Jais-ASR do not list Vietnamese in their reviewed sources. English-only models are also excluded.

Generated from the reviewed model database (latest review November 3, 2026). "Lists Vietnamese" means the model's official source explicitly names the language; it does not guarantee equal accuracy across languages.