{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@id": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/huggingface-co/2025-11-21-open-asr-leaderboard-trends-and-insights-with-new/#webpage",
  "@type": [
    "WebPage",
    "ArchiveComponent"
  ],
  "articleBody": "While everyone (and their grandma 👵) is spinning up new ASR models, picking the right one for your use case can feel more overwhelming than choosing your next Netflix show. As of 21 Nov 2025, there are **150 [Audio-Text-to-Text](https://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=audio-text-to-text&sort=trending)** and **27K [ASR models](https://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=automatic-speech-recognition&sort=trending)** on the Hub 🤯\n\nMost benchmarks focus on **short-form English transcription (<30s),** and overlook other important tasks, such as (1) multilingual performance and (2) model throughput, which can a be deciding factor for long-form audio like meetings and podcasts.\n\nOver the past two years, the [**Open ASR Leaderboard**](https://huggingface.co/spaces/hf-audio/open_asr_leaderboard) has become a standard for comparing open and closed-source models on both **accuracy** and **efficiency**. Recently, **multilingual** and **long-form transcription** tracks have been added to the leaderboard 🎉\n\n### TL;DR - [Open ASR Leaderboard](https://huggingface.co/spaces/hf-audio/open_asr_leaderboard)\n\n- 📝 **New preprint** on ASR trends from the leaderboard: [https://hf.co/papers/2510.06961](https://hf.co/papers/2510.06961)\n- 🧠 **Best accuracy:** Conformer encoder + LLM decoders (open-source ftw 🥳)\n- ⚡ **Fastest:** CTC / TDT decoders\n- 🌍 **Multilingual:** Comes at the cost of single-language performance\n- ⌛ **Long-form:** Closed-source systems still lead (for now 😉)\n- 🧑💻 **Fine-tuning guides** ([Parakeet](https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Parakeet), [Voxtral](https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Voxtral-ASR), [Whisper](https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/chapter5/fine-tuning)): to continue pushing performance\n\n## Takeaways from 60+ models\n\nAs of 21 Nov 2025, the *Open ASR Leaderboard* compares **60+ open and closed-source models** from **18 organizations**, across **11 datasets**.\n\nIn a recent [preprint](https://hf.co/papers/2510.06961), we dive into the technical setup and highlight some key trends in modern ASR. Here are the big takeaways 👇\n\n## 1. Conformer encoder 🤝 LLM decoder tops the charts 📈\n\n![thumbnail](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/leaderboard_WER.png)\n\nModels combining [**Conformer encoders**](https://huggingface.co/papers/2005.08100) with **large language model (LLM) decoders** currently lead in English transcription accuracy. For example, **NVIDIA’s [Canary-Qwen-2.5B](https://huggingface.co/nvidia/canary-qwen-2.5b)**, **IBM’s [Granite-Speech-3.3-8B](https://huggingface.co/ibm-granite/granite-speech-3.3-8b)**, and **Microsoft’s [Phi-4-Multimodal-Instruct](https://huggingface.co/microsoft/Phi-4-multimodal-instruct)** achieve the lowest word error rates ([WER](https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/en/chapter5/evaluation#word-error-rate)), showing that integrating LLM reasoning can significantly boost ASR accuracy.\n\n💡 *Pro-tip: NVIDIA introduced [Fast Conformer](https://huggingface.co/papers/2305.05084), a 2x faster variant of the Conformer, that is used in their Canary and Parakeet suite of models.*\n\n## 2. Speed–accuracy tradeoffs ⚖️\n\n![thumbnail](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/leaderboard_RTX.png)\n\nWhile highly accurate, these LLM decoders tend to be **slower** than simpler approaches. On the *Open ASR Leaderboard*, efficiency is measured using *inverse real-time factor* (RTFx), where higher is better.\n\nFor even faster inference, [**CTC**](https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/en/chapter3/ctc#ctc-architectures) and [**TDT**](https://huggingface.co/papers/2304.06795) decoders deliver **10–100× faster throughput**, albeit with slightly higher error rates. This makes them ideal for **real-time**, **offline**, or **batch transcription** tasks (such as meetings, lectures, or podcasts).\n\n## 3. Multilingual 🌍\n\n![thumbnail](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/multilingual.png)\n\nOpenAI’s [**Whisper Large v3**](https://huggingface.co/openai/whisper-large-v3) remains a strong multilingual baseline, supporting **99 languages**. However, **fine-tuned or distilled variants** like [**Distil-Whisper**](https://huggingface.co/distil-whisper/distil-large-v3.5) and [**CrisperWhisper**](https://huggingface.co/nyrahealth/CrisperWhisper) often outperform the original on **English-only** tasks, showing how targeted fine-tuning can improve specialization (*how to fine-tune? Check out guides for [Whisper](https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/chapter5/fine-tuning), [Parakeet](https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Parakeet), and [Voxtral](https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Voxtral-ASR)*).\n\nThat said, focusing on English tends to **reduce multilingual coverage** 👉 a classic case of the tradeoff between specialization and generalization. Similarly, while **self-supervised** systems like Meta’s [**Massively Multilingual Speech (MMS)**](https://huggingface.co/facebook/mms-1b-all) and [**Omnilingual ASR**](https://github.com/facebookresearch/omnilingual-asr) can support 1K+ languages, they trail behind language-specific encoders in accuracy.\n\n⭐ *While just five languages are currently benchmarked, we’re planning to expand to more languages and are excited for new dataset and models contributions to multilingual ASR through GitHub [pull requests](https://github.com/huggingface/open_asr_leaderboard).*\n\n🎯 Alongside multilingual benchmarks, several **community-driven leaderboards** focus on individual languages. For example, the [**Open Universal Arabic ASR Leaderboard**](https://huggingface.co/spaces/elmresearchcenter/open_universal_arabic_asr_leaderboard) compares models across **Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects**, highlighting how speech variation and diglossia challenge current systems. Similarly. the [**Russian ASR Leaderboard**](https://huggingface.co/spaces/Vikhrmodels/Russian_ASR_Leaderboard) provides a growing hub for evaluating encoder-decoder and CTC models on **Russian-specific phonology and morphology**. These localized efforts mirror the broader multilingual leaderboard’s mission to encourage **dataset sharing, fine-tuned checkpoints, and transparent model comparisons**, especially in languages with fewer established ASR resources.\n\n## 4. Long-form transcription is a different game ⏳\n\n![thumbnail](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/long_form.png)\n\nFor **long-form audio** (e.g., podcasts, lectures, meetings), **closed-source systems** still edge out open ones. It could be due to domain tuning, custom chunking, or production-grade optimization.\n\nAmong open models, **OpenAI’s Whisper Large v3** performs the best. But for throughput, **CTC-based Conformers** shine 👉 for example, **NVIDIA’s [Parakeet CTC 1.1B](https://huggingface.co/nvidia/parakeet-ctc-1.1b)** achieves an **RTFx of 2793.75**, compared to **68.56** for Whisper Large v3, with only a moderate WER degradation (**6.68** and **6.43** respectively).\n\nThe tradeoff? Parakeet is **English-only,** again reminding us of that multilingual and specialization tradeoff 🫠.\n\n⭐ *While closed systems still lead, there’s huge potential for open-source innovation here. Long-form ASR remains one of the most exciting frontiers for the community to tackle next!*\n\n## 🎤 The Show Must Go On\n\nGiven how fast ASR is evolving, we’re excited to see what new architectures push performance and efficiency, and how the *Open ASR Leaderboard* continues to serve as a **transparent, community-driven benchmark** for the field, and as a reference for other leaderboards ([Russian](https://huggingface.co/spaces/Vikhrmodels/Russian_ASR_Leaderboard), [Arabic](https://huggingface.co/spaces/elmresearchcenter/open_universal_arabic_asr_leaderboard), and [Speech DeepFake Detection](https://huggingface.co/spaces/Speech-Arena-2025/Speech-DF-Arena)).\n\nWe’ll keep expanding the *Open ASR LeaderBoard* with **more models, more languages, and more datasets** so stay tuned 👀\n\n👉 **Want to contribute?** Head on over to the [GitHub repo](https://github.com/huggingface/open_asr_leaderboard) to open a *pull request* 🚀\n",
  "authors": [],
  "captured_at": "2026-10-04T12:50:30.804479567+00:00",
  "category": "ai",
  "content_html": "<p>While everyone (and their grandma 👵) is spinning up new ASR models, picking the right one for your use case can feel more overwhelming than choosing your next Netflix show. As of 21 Nov 2025, there are <strong>150 <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=audio-text-to-text&amp;sort=trending\">Audio-Text-to-Text</a></strong> and <strong>27K <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=automatic-speech-recognition&amp;sort=trending\">ASR models</a></strong> on the Hub 🤯</p>\n<p>Most benchmarks focus on <strong>short-form English transcription (&lt;30s),</strong> and overlook other important tasks, such as (1) multilingual performance and (2) model throughput, which can a be deciding factor for long-form audio like meetings and podcasts.</p>\n<p>Over the past two years, the <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/spaces/hf-audio/open_asr_leaderboard\"><strong>Open ASR Leaderboard</strong></a> has become a standard for comparing open and closed-source models on both <strong>accuracy</strong> and <strong>efficiency</strong>. Recently, <strong>multilingual</strong> and <strong>long-form transcription</strong> tracks have been added to the leaderboard 🎉</p>\n<h3>TL;DR - <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/spaces/hf-audio/open_asr_leaderboard\">Open ASR Leaderboard</a></h3>\n<ul>\n<li>📝 <strong>New preprint</strong> on ASR trends from the leaderboard: <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://hf.co/papers/2510.06961\">https://hf.co/papers/2510.06961</a></li>\n<li>🧠 <strong>Best accuracy:</strong> Conformer encoder + LLM decoders (open-source ftw 🥳)</li>\n<li>⚡ <strong>Fastest:</strong> CTC / TDT decoders</li>\n<li>🌍 <strong>Multilingual:</strong> Comes at the cost of single-language performance</li>\n<li>⌛ <strong>Long-form:</strong> Closed-source systems still lead (for now 😉)</li>\n<li>🧑💻 <strong>Fine-tuning guides</strong> (<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Parakeet\">Parakeet</a>, <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Voxtral-ASR\">Voxtral</a>, <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/chapter5/fine-tuning\">Whisper</a>): to continue pushing performance</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Takeaways from 60+ models</h2>\n<p>As of 21 Nov 2025, the <em>Open ASR Leaderboard</em> compares <strong>60+ open and closed-source models</strong> from <strong>18 organizations</strong>, across <strong>11 datasets</strong>.</p>\n<p>In a recent <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://hf.co/papers/2510.06961\">preprint</a>, we dive into the technical setup and highlight some key trends in modern ASR. Here are the big takeaways 👇</p>\n<h2>1. Conformer encoder 🤝 LLM decoder tops the charts 📈</h2>\n<p><picture class=\"article-picture article-picture-fallback\" style=\"--image-ratio:16 / 9\"><img src=\"https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/leaderboard_WER.png\" alt=\"thumbnail\" loading=\"eager\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" class=\"progressive-image\"></picture></p>\n<p>Models combining <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/papers/2005.08100\"><strong>Conformer encoders</strong></a> with <strong>large language model (LLM) decoders</strong> currently lead in English transcription accuracy. For example, <strong>NVIDIA’s <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/nvidia/canary-qwen-2.5b\">Canary-Qwen-2.5B</a></strong>, <strong>IBM’s <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/ibm-granite/granite-speech-3.3-8b\">Granite-Speech-3.3-8B</a></strong>, and <strong>Microsoft’s <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/microsoft/Phi-4-multimodal-instruct\">Phi-4-Multimodal-Instruct</a></strong> achieve the lowest word error rates (<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/en/chapter5/evaluation#word-error-rate\">WER</a>), showing that integrating LLM reasoning can significantly boost ASR accuracy.</p>\n<p>💡 <em>Pro-tip: NVIDIA introduced <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/papers/2305.05084\">Fast Conformer</a>, a 2x faster variant of the Conformer, that is used in their Canary and Parakeet suite of models.</em></p>\n<h2>2. Speed–accuracy tradeoffs ⚖️</h2>\n<p><picture class=\"article-picture article-picture-fallback\" style=\"--image-ratio:16 / 9\"><img src=\"https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/leaderboard_RTX.png\" alt=\"thumbnail\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"low\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" class=\"progressive-image\"></picture></p>\n<p>While highly accurate, these LLM decoders tend to be <strong>slower</strong> than simpler approaches. On the <em>Open ASR Leaderboard</em>, efficiency is measured using <em>inverse real-time factor</em> (RTFx), where higher is better.</p>\n<p>For even faster inference, <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/en/chapter3/ctc#ctc-architectures\"><strong>CTC</strong></a> and <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/papers/2304.06795\"><strong>TDT</strong></a> decoders deliver <strong>10–100× faster throughput</strong>, albeit with slightly higher error rates. This makes them ideal for <strong>real-time</strong>, <strong>offline</strong>, or <strong>batch transcription</strong> tasks (such as meetings, lectures, or podcasts).</p>\n<h2>3. Multilingual 🌍</h2>\n<p><picture class=\"article-picture article-picture-fallback\" style=\"--image-ratio:16 / 9\"><img src=\"https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/multilingual.png\" alt=\"thumbnail\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"low\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" class=\"progressive-image\"></picture></p>\n<p>OpenAI’s <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/openai/whisper-large-v3\"><strong>Whisper Large v3</strong></a> remains a strong multilingual baseline, supporting <strong>99 languages</strong>. However, <strong>fine-tuned or distilled variants</strong> like <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/distil-whisper/distil-large-v3.5\"><strong>Distil-Whisper</strong></a> and <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/nyrahealth/CrisperWhisper\"><strong>CrisperWhisper</strong></a> often outperform the original on <strong>English-only</strong> tasks, showing how targeted fine-tuning can improve specialization (<em>how to fine-tune? Check out guides for <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/chapter5/fine-tuning\">Whisper</a>, <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Parakeet\">Parakeet</a>, and <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Voxtral-ASR\">Voxtral</a></em>).</p>\n<p>That said, focusing on English tends to <strong>reduce multilingual coverage</strong> 👉 a classic case of the tradeoff between specialization and generalization. Similarly, while <strong>self-supervised</strong> systems like Meta’s <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/facebook/mms-1b-all\"><strong>Massively Multilingual Speech (MMS)</strong></a> and <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://github.com/facebookresearch/omnilingual-asr\"><strong>Omnilingual ASR</strong></a> can support 1K+ languages, they trail behind language-specific encoders in accuracy.</p>\n<p>⭐ <em>While just five languages are currently benchmarked, we’re planning to expand to more languages and are excited for new dataset and models contributions to multilingual ASR through GitHub <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://github.com/huggingface/open_asr_leaderboard\">pull requests</a>.</em></p>\n<p>🎯 Alongside multilingual benchmarks, several <strong>community-driven leaderboards</strong> focus on individual languages. For example, the <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/spaces/elmresearchcenter/open_universal_arabic_asr_leaderboard\"><strong>Open Universal Arabic ASR Leaderboard</strong></a> compares models across <strong>Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects</strong>, highlighting how speech variation and diglossia challenge current systems. Similarly. the <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/spaces/Vikhrmodels/Russian_ASR_Leaderboard\"><strong>Russian ASR Leaderboard</strong></a> provides a growing hub for evaluating encoder-decoder and CTC models on <strong>Russian-specific phonology and morphology</strong>. These localized efforts mirror the broader multilingual leaderboard’s mission to encourage <strong>dataset sharing, fine-tuned checkpoints, and transparent model comparisons</strong>, especially in languages with fewer established ASR resources.</p>\n<h2>4. Long-form transcription is a different game ⏳</h2>\n<p><picture class=\"article-picture article-picture-fallback\" style=\"--image-ratio:16 / 9\"><img src=\"https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/long_form.png\" alt=\"thumbnail\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"low\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" class=\"progressive-image\"></picture></p>\n<p>For <strong>long-form audio</strong> (e.g., podcasts, lectures, meetings), <strong>closed-source systems</strong> still edge out open ones. It could be due to domain tuning, custom chunking, or production-grade optimization.</p>\n<p>Among open models, <strong>OpenAI’s Whisper Large v3</strong> performs the best. But for throughput, <strong>CTC-based Conformers</strong> shine 👉 for example, <strong>NVIDIA’s <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/nvidia/parakeet-ctc-1.1b\">Parakeet CTC 1.1B</a></strong> achieves an <strong>RTFx of 2793.75</strong>, compared to <strong>68.56</strong> for Whisper Large v3, with only a moderate WER degradation (<strong>6.68</strong> and <strong>6.43</strong> respectively).</p>\n<p>The tradeoff? Parakeet is <strong>English-only,</strong> again reminding us of that multilingual and specialization tradeoff 🫠.</p>\n<p>⭐ <em>While closed systems still lead, there’s huge potential for open-source innovation here. Long-form ASR remains one of the most exciting frontiers for the community to tackle next!</em></p>\n<h2>🎤 The Show Must Go On</h2>\n<p>Given how fast ASR is evolving, we’re excited to see what new architectures push performance and efficiency, and how the <em>Open ASR Leaderboard</em> continues to serve as a <strong>transparent, community-driven benchmark</strong> for the field, and as a reference for other leaderboards (<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/spaces/Vikhrmodels/Russian_ASR_Leaderboard\">Russian</a>, <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/spaces/elmresearchcenter/open_universal_arabic_asr_leaderboard\">Arabic</a>, and <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://huggingface.co/spaces/Speech-Arena-2025/Speech-DF-Arena\">Speech DeepFake Detection</a>).</p>\n<p>We’ll keep expanding the <em>Open ASR LeaderBoard</em> with <strong>more models, more languages, and more datasets</strong> so stay tuned 👀</p>\n<p>👉 <strong>Want to contribute?</strong> Head on over to the <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://github.com/huggingface/open_asr_leaderboard\">GitHub repo</a> to open a <em>pull request</em> 🚀</p>\n",
  "content_markdown": "While everyone (and their grandma 👵) is spinning up new ASR models, picking the right one for your use case can feel more overwhelming than choosing your next Netflix show. As of 21 Nov 2025, there are **150 [Audio-Text-to-Text](https://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=audio-text-to-text&sort=trending)** and **27K [ASR models](https://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=automatic-speech-recognition&sort=trending)** on the Hub 🤯\n\nMost benchmarks focus on **short-form English transcription (<30s),** and overlook other important tasks, such as (1) multilingual performance and (2) model throughput, which can a be deciding factor for long-form audio like meetings and podcasts.\n\nOver the past two years, the [**Open ASR Leaderboard**](https://huggingface.co/spaces/hf-audio/open_asr_leaderboard) has become a standard for comparing open and closed-source models on both **accuracy** and **efficiency**. Recently, **multilingual** and **long-form transcription** tracks have been added to the leaderboard 🎉\n\n### TL;DR - [Open ASR Leaderboard](https://huggingface.co/spaces/hf-audio/open_asr_leaderboard)\n\n- 📝 **New preprint** on ASR trends from the leaderboard: [https://hf.co/papers/2510.06961](https://hf.co/papers/2510.06961)\n- 🧠 **Best accuracy:** Conformer encoder + LLM decoders (open-source ftw 🥳)\n- ⚡ **Fastest:** CTC / TDT decoders\n- 🌍 **Multilingual:** Comes at the cost of single-language performance\n- ⌛ **Long-form:** Closed-source systems still lead (for now 😉)\n- 🧑💻 **Fine-tuning guides** ([Parakeet](https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Parakeet), [Voxtral](https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Voxtral-ASR), [Whisper](https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/chapter5/fine-tuning)): to continue pushing performance\n\n## Takeaways from 60+ models\n\nAs of 21 Nov 2025, the *Open ASR Leaderboard* compares **60+ open and closed-source models** from **18 organizations**, across **11 datasets**.\n\nIn a recent [preprint](https://hf.co/papers/2510.06961), we dive into the technical setup and highlight some key trends in modern ASR. Here are the big takeaways 👇\n\n## 1. Conformer encoder 🤝 LLM decoder tops the charts 📈\n\n![thumbnail](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/leaderboard_WER.png)\n\nModels combining [**Conformer encoders**](https://huggingface.co/papers/2005.08100) with **large language model (LLM) decoders** currently lead in English transcription accuracy. For example, **NVIDIA’s [Canary-Qwen-2.5B](https://huggingface.co/nvidia/canary-qwen-2.5b)**, **IBM’s [Granite-Speech-3.3-8B](https://huggingface.co/ibm-granite/granite-speech-3.3-8b)**, and **Microsoft’s [Phi-4-Multimodal-Instruct](https://huggingface.co/microsoft/Phi-4-multimodal-instruct)** achieve the lowest word error rates ([WER](https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/en/chapter5/evaluation#word-error-rate)), showing that integrating LLM reasoning can significantly boost ASR accuracy.\n\n💡 *Pro-tip: NVIDIA introduced [Fast Conformer](https://huggingface.co/papers/2305.05084), a 2x faster variant of the Conformer, that is used in their Canary and Parakeet suite of models.*\n\n## 2. Speed–accuracy tradeoffs ⚖️\n\n![thumbnail](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/leaderboard_RTX.png)\n\nWhile highly accurate, these LLM decoders tend to be **slower** than simpler approaches. On the *Open ASR Leaderboard*, efficiency is measured using *inverse real-time factor* (RTFx), where higher is better.\n\nFor even faster inference, [**CTC**](https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/en/chapter3/ctc#ctc-architectures) and [**TDT**](https://huggingface.co/papers/2304.06795) decoders deliver **10–100× faster throughput**, albeit with slightly higher error rates. This makes them ideal for **real-time**, **offline**, or **batch transcription** tasks (such as meetings, lectures, or podcasts).\n\n## 3. Multilingual 🌍\n\n![thumbnail](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/multilingual.png)\n\nOpenAI’s [**Whisper Large v3**](https://huggingface.co/openai/whisper-large-v3) remains a strong multilingual baseline, supporting **99 languages**. However, **fine-tuned or distilled variants** like [**Distil-Whisper**](https://huggingface.co/distil-whisper/distil-large-v3.5) and [**CrisperWhisper**](https://huggingface.co/nyrahealth/CrisperWhisper) often outperform the original on **English-only** tasks, showing how targeted fine-tuning can improve specialization (*how to fine-tune? Check out guides for [Whisper](https://huggingface.co/learn/audio-course/chapter5/fine-tuning), [Parakeet](https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Parakeet), and [Voxtral](https://github.com/Deep-unlearning/Finetune-Voxtral-ASR)*).\n\nThat said, focusing on English tends to **reduce multilingual coverage** 👉 a classic case of the tradeoff between specialization and generalization. Similarly, while **self-supervised** systems like Meta’s [**Massively Multilingual Speech (MMS)**](https://huggingface.co/facebook/mms-1b-all) and [**Omnilingual ASR**](https://github.com/facebookresearch/omnilingual-asr) can support 1K+ languages, they trail behind language-specific encoders in accuracy.\n\n⭐ *While just five languages are currently benchmarked, we’re planning to expand to more languages and are excited for new dataset and models contributions to multilingual ASR through GitHub [pull requests](https://github.com/huggingface/open_asr_leaderboard).*\n\n🎯 Alongside multilingual benchmarks, several **community-driven leaderboards** focus on individual languages. For example, the [**Open Universal Arabic ASR Leaderboard**](https://huggingface.co/spaces/elmresearchcenter/open_universal_arabic_asr_leaderboard) compares models across **Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects**, highlighting how speech variation and diglossia challenge current systems. Similarly. the [**Russian ASR Leaderboard**](https://huggingface.co/spaces/Vikhrmodels/Russian_ASR_Leaderboard) provides a growing hub for evaluating encoder-decoder and CTC models on **Russian-specific phonology and morphology**. These localized efforts mirror the broader multilingual leaderboard’s mission to encourage **dataset sharing, fine-tuned checkpoints, and transparent model comparisons**, especially in languages with fewer established ASR resources.\n\n## 4. Long-form transcription is a different game ⏳\n\n![thumbnail](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/blog/open_asr_leaderboard/long_form.png)\n\nFor **long-form audio** (e.g., podcasts, lectures, meetings), **closed-source systems** still edge out open ones. It could be due to domain tuning, custom chunking, or production-grade optimization.\n\nAmong open models, **OpenAI’s Whisper Large v3** performs the best. But for throughput, **CTC-based Conformers** shine 👉 for example, **NVIDIA’s [Parakeet CTC 1.1B](https://huggingface.co/nvidia/parakeet-ctc-1.1b)** achieves an **RTFx of 2793.75**, compared to **68.56** for Whisper Large v3, with only a moderate WER degradation (**6.68** and **6.43** respectively).\n\nThe tradeoff? Parakeet is **English-only,** again reminding us of that multilingual and specialization tradeoff 🫠.\n\n⭐ *While closed systems still lead, there’s huge potential for open-source innovation here. Long-form ASR remains one of the most exciting frontiers for the community to tackle next!*\n\n## 🎤 The Show Must Go On\n\nGiven how fast ASR is evolving, we’re excited to see what new architectures push performance and efficiency, and how the *Open ASR Leaderboard* continues to serve as a **transparent, community-driven benchmark** for the field, and as a reference for other leaderboards ([Russian](https://huggingface.co/spaces/Vikhrmodels/Russian_ASR_Leaderboard), [Arabic](https://huggingface.co/spaces/elmresearchcenter/open_universal_arabic_asr_leaderboard), and [Speech DeepFake Detection](https://huggingface.co/spaces/Speech-Arena-2025/Speech-DF-Arena)).\n\nWe’ll keep expanding the *Open ASR LeaderBoard* with **more models, more languages, and more datasets** so stay tuned 👀\n\n👉 **Want to contribute?** Head on over to the [GitHub repo](https://github.com/huggingface/open_asr_leaderboard) to open a *pull request* 🚀\n",
  "dateCreated": "2026-10-04T12:50:30.804479567+00:00",
  "date_created": "2025-11-21T00:00:00+00:00",
  "date_modified": "2025-11-21T00:00:00+00:00",
  "date_published": "2025-11-21T00:00:00+00:00",
  "description": "While everyone (and their grandma 👵) is spinning up new ASR models, picking the right one for your use case can feel more overwhelming than choosing your next Netflix show. As of 21 Nov 2025, there are 150 Audio-Text-to-Text and 27K ASR…",
  "external_url": "https://huggingface.co/blog/open-asr-leaderboard",
  "git": {
    "commit": "ebb0941c5c06a2ab2377342d607535262a3e969e",
    "path": "items/huggingface-co/2025/11/2025-11-21-open-asr-leaderboard-trends-and-insights-with-new.md",
    "permalink": "https://github.com/aymericbeaumet/aggr-instance/blob/ebb0941c5c06a2ab2377342d607535262a3e969e/items/huggingface-co/2025/11/2025-11-21-open-asr-leaderboard-trends-and-insights-with-new.md"
  },
  "id": "urn:aggr:item:81cf5c75df6fffdada1927ccac0cb2d2003bc073",
  "isBasedOn": {
    "@id": "https://huggingface.co/blog/open-asr-leaderboard"
  },
  "mainEntity": {
    "@id": "https://huggingface.co/blog/open-asr-leaderboard",
    "@type": "CreativeWork",
    "archivedAt": {
      "@id": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/huggingface-co/2025-11-21-open-asr-leaderboard-trends-and-insights-with-new/#webpage"
    },
    "dateModified": "2025-11-21T00:00:00+00:00",
    "datePublished": "2025-11-21T00:00:00+00:00",
    "headline": "Open ASR Leaderboard: Trends and Insights with New Multilingual & Long-Form Tracks",
    "timeRequired": "PT4M",
    "url": "https://huggingface.co/blog/open-asr-leaderboard",
    "wordCount": 812
  },
  "name": "Archived snapshot: Open ASR Leaderboard: Trends and Insights with New Multilingual & Long-Form Tracks",
  "preview": null,
  "reading_minutes": 4,
  "replicated_at": null,
  "source": "huggingface-co",
  "source_name": "Hugging Face - Blog",
  "summary": null,
  "tags": [],
  "temporalCoverage": "2026-10-04T12:50:30.804479567+00:00",
  "title": "Open ASR Leaderboard: Trends and Insights with New Multilingual & Long-Form Tracks",
  "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/huggingface-co/2025-11-21-open-asr-leaderboard-trends-and-insights-with-new/",
  "word_count": 812
}