# faster-whisper > Faster Whisper transcription with CTranslate2 - **URL**: https://www.freshcrate.ai/projects/faster-whisper - **Author**: Guillaume Klein - **Category**: Frameworks - **Latest version**: `1.2.1` (2026-04-21) - **License**: MIT - **Source**: https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper - **Language**: Python - **GitHub**: 22,327 stars, 1,813 forks - **Registry**: pypi (`faster-whisper`) - **Tags**: `ctranslate2`, `inference`, `openai`, `pypi`, `quantization`, `speech`, `transformer`, `whisper` ## Description [![CI](https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/workflows/CI/badge.svg)](https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/actions?query=workflow%3ACI) [![PyPI version](https://badge.fury.io/py/faster-whisper.svg)](https://badge.fury.io/py/faster-whisper) # Faster Whisper transcription with CTranslate2 **faster-whisper** is a reimplementation of OpenAI's Whisper model using [CTranslate2](https://github.com/OpenNMT/CTranslate2/), which is a fast inference engine for Transformer models. This implementation is up to 4 times faster than [openai/whisper](https://github.com/openai/whisper) for the same accuracy while using less memory. The efficiency can be further improved with 8-bit quantization on both CPU and GPU. ## Benchmark ### Whisper For reference, here's the time and memory usage that are required to transcribe [**13 minutes**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u7tTptBo9I) of audio using different implementations: * [openai/whisper](https://github.com/openai/whisper)@[v20240930](https://github.com/openai/whisper/tree/v20240930) * [whisper.cpp](https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp)@[v1.7.2](https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp/tree/v1.7.2) * [transformers](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers)@[v4.46.3](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/tree/v4.46.3) * [faster-whisper](https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper)@[v1.1.0](https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/tree/v1.1.0) ### Large-v2 model on GPU | Implementation | Precision | Beam size | Time | VRAM Usage | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | openai/whisper | fp16 | 5 | 2m23s | 4708MB | | whisper.cpp (Flash Attention) | fp16 | 5 | 1m05s | 4127MB | | transformers (SDPA)[^1] | fp16 | 5 | 1m52s | 4960MB | | faster-whisper | fp16 | 5 | 1m03s | 4525MB | | faster-whisper (`batch_size=8`) | fp16 | 5 | 17s | 6090MB | | faster-whisper | int8 | 5 | 59s | 2926MB | | faster-whisper (`batch_size=8`) | int8 | 5 | 16s | 4500MB | ### distil-whisper-large-v3 model on GPU | Implementation | Precision | Beam size | Time | YT Commons WER | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | transformers (SDPA) (`batch_size=16`) | fp16 | 5 | 46m12s | 14.801 | | faster-whisper (`batch_size=16`) | fp16 | 5 | 25m50s | 13.527 | *GPU Benchmarks are Executed with CUDA 12.4 on a NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti 8GB.* [^1]: transformers OOM for any batch size > 1 ### Small model on CPU | Implementation | Precision | Beam size | Time | RAM Usage | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | openai/whisper | fp32 | 5 | 6m58s | 2335MB | | whisper.cpp | fp32 | 5 | 2m05s | 1049MB | | whisper.cpp (OpenVINO) | fp32 | 5 | 1m45s | 1642MB | | faster-whisper | fp32 | 5 | 2m37s | 2257MB | | faster-whisper (`batch_size=8`) | fp32 | 5 | 1m06s | 4230MB | | faster-whisper | int8 | 5 | 1m42s | 1477MB | | faster-whisper (`batch_size=8`) | int8 | 5 | 51s | 3608MB | *Executed with 8 threads on an Intel Core i7-12700K.* ## Requirements * Python 3.9 or greater Unlike openai-whisper, FFmpeg does **not** need to be installed on the system. The audio is decoded with the Python library [PyAV](https://github.com/PyAV-Org/PyAV) which bundles the FFmpeg libraries in its package. ### GPU GPU execution requires the following NVIDIA libraries to be installed: * [cuBLAS for CUDA 12](https://developer.nvidia.com/cublas) * [cuDNN 9 for CUDA 12](https://developer.nvidia.com/cudnn) **Note**: The latest versions of `ctranslate2` only support CUDA 12 and cuDNN 9. For CUDA 11 and cuDNN 8, the current workaround is downgrading to the `3.24.0` version of `ctranslate2`, for CUDA 12 and cuDNN 8, downgrade to the `4.4.0` version of `ctranslate2`, (This can be done with `pip install --force-reinstall ctranslate2==4.4.0` or specifying the version in a `requirements.txt`). There are multiple ways to install the NVIDIA libraries mentioned above. The recommended way is described in the official NVIDIA documentation, but we also suggest other installation methods below.
Other installation methods (click to expand) **Note:** For all these methods below, keep in mind the above note regarding CUDA versions. Depending on your setup, you may need to install the _CUDA 11_ versions of libraries that correspond to the CUDA 12 libraries listed in the instructions below. #### Use Docker The libraries (cuBLAS, cuDNN) are installed in this official NVIDIA CUDA Docker images: `nvidia/cuda:12.3.2-cudnn9-runtime-ubuntu22.04`. #### Install with `pip` (Linux only) On Linux these libraries can be installed with `pip`. Note that `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` must be set before launching Python. ```bash pip install nvidia-cublas-cu12 nvidia-cudnn-cu12==9.* export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`python3 -c 'import os; import nvidia.cublas.lib; import nvidia.cudnn.lib; print(os.path.dirname(nvidia.cublas.lib.__file__) + ":" + os.path.dirname(nvidia.cudnn.lib.__file__))'` ``` #### Download the libraries from Purfview's repository (Windows & Linux) Purfview's [whisper-standalone-win](https://github.com/Purfview/whisper-standalone-win) provid ## Recent releases | Version | Date | Urgency | Changes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | `1.2.1` | 2026-04-21 | Low | Imported from PyPI (1.2.1) | | `v1.2.1` | 2025-10-31 | Low | ## What's Changed * only merge when `clip_timestamps` are not provided by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1345 * Fix: Prevent <\|nocaptions\|> tokens in BatchedInferencePipeline by @mmichelli in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1338 * Upgrade to Silero-VAD V6 by @MahmoudAshraf97 and @sssshhhhhh in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1373 * Offload retry logic to hf hub by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/p | | `v1.2.1` | 2025-10-31 | Low | ## What's Changed * only merge when `clip_timestamps` are not provided by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1345 * Fix: Prevent <\|nocaptions\|> tokens in BatchedInferencePipeline by @mmichelli in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1338 * Upgrade to Silero-VAD V6 by @MahmoudAshraf97 and @sssshhhhhh in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1373 * Offload retry logic to hf hub by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/p | | `v1.2.1` | 2025-10-31 | Low | ## What's Changed * only merge when `clip_timestamps` are not provided by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1345 * Fix: Prevent <\|nocaptions\|> tokens in BatchedInferencePipeline by @mmichelli in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1338 * Upgrade to Silero-VAD V6 by @MahmoudAshraf97 and @sssshhhhhh in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1373 * Offload retry logic to hf hub by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/p | | `v1.2.1` | 2025-10-31 | Low | ## What's Changed * only merge when `clip_timestamps` are not provided by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1345 * Fix: Prevent <\|nocaptions\|> tokens in BatchedInferencePipeline by @mmichelli in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1338 * Upgrade to Silero-VAD V6 by @MahmoudAshraf97 and @sssshhhhhh in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1373 * Offload retry logic to hf hub by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/p | | `v1.2.1` | 2025-10-31 | Low | ## What's Changed * only merge when `clip_timestamps` are not provided by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1345 * Fix: Prevent <\|nocaptions\|> tokens in BatchedInferencePipeline by @mmichelli in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1338 * Upgrade to Silero-VAD V6 by @MahmoudAshraf97 and @sssshhhhhh in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1373 * Offload retry logic to hf hub by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/p | | `v1.2.1` | 2025-10-31 | Low | ## What's Changed * only merge when `clip_timestamps` are not provided by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1345 * Fix: Prevent <\|nocaptions\|> tokens in BatchedInferencePipeline by @mmichelli in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1338 * Upgrade to Silero-VAD V6 by @MahmoudAshraf97 and @sssshhhhhh in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1373 * Offload retry logic to hf hub by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/p | | `v1.2.1` | 2025-10-31 | Low | ## What's Changed * only merge when `clip_timestamps` are not provided by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1345 * Fix: Prevent <\|nocaptions\|> tokens in BatchedInferencePipeline by @mmichelli in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1338 * Upgrade to Silero-VAD V6 by @MahmoudAshraf97 and @sssshhhhhh in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1373 * Offload retry logic to hf hub by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/p | | `v1.2.1` | 2025-10-31 | Low | ## What's Changed * only merge when `clip_timestamps` are not provided by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1345 * Fix: Prevent <\|nocaptions\|> tokens in BatchedInferencePipeline by @mmichelli in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1338 * Upgrade to Silero-VAD V6 by @MahmoudAshraf97 and @sssshhhhhh in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1373 * Offload retry logic to hf hub by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/p | | `v1.2.1` | 2025-10-31 | Low | ## What's Changed * only merge when `clip_timestamps` are not provided by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1345 * Fix: Prevent <\|nocaptions\|> tokens in BatchedInferencePipeline by @mmichelli in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1338 * Upgrade to Silero-VAD V6 by @MahmoudAshraf97 and @sssshhhhhh in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/pull/1373 * Offload retry logic to hf hub by @MahmoudAshraf97 in https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper/p | ## 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