Our benchmark · same recordings, same Mac
Parakeet v3 vs Whisper large-v3-turbo, tested in 25 languages.
We ran NVIDIA’s Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 and OpenAI’s Whisper large-v3-turbo on the same 100 FLEURS recordings per language, on one Mac, and published every transcript.
We make Yap, which runs Parakeet on the device. That is why every recording hash, transcript and timing is public: on GitHub and on the benchmark page.
Word error rate by language
Lower is better. Each number links to its fact page with the counts behind it.
| Language | Parakeet TDT v3 | Whisper large-v3-turbo | Fewer errors |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | 4.5% | 3.9% | Whisper |
| German | 4.8% | 5.1% | Parakeet |
| French | 5.3% | 6.6% | Parakeet |
| Spanish | 2.8% | 2.5% | Whisper |
| Italian | 2.5% | 2.7% | Parakeet |
| Portuguese | 3.6% | 3.3% | Whisper |
| Russian | 4.7% | 4.6% | Whisper |
| Ukrainian | 5.7% | 6.8% | Parakeet |
| Croatian | 12.4% | 11.3% | Whisper |
| Slovenian | 19.8% | 23.5% | Parakeet |
| Latvian | 17.3% | 18.6% | Parakeet |
| Lithuanian | 17.8% | 25.0% | Parakeet |
| Estonian | 14.2% | 19.9% | Parakeet |
| Finnish | 10.1% | 7.7% | Whisper |
| Swedish | 12.0% | 9.9% | Whisper |
| Danish | 15.8% | 14.6% | Whisper |
| Dutch | 6.3% | 6.6% | Parakeet |
| Polish | 8.2% | 7.7% | Whisper |
| Czech | 10.4% | 11.5% | Parakeet |
| Slovak | 8.4% | 11.5% | Parakeet |
| Hungarian | 14.1% | 17.2% | Parakeet |
| Romanian | 10.0% | 11.8% | Parakeet |
| Bulgarian | 13.4% | 15.9% | Parakeet |
| Greek | 31.7% | 12.0% | Whisper |
| Maltese | 22.0% | 72.3% | Parakeet |
Which one should you use?
Parakeet v3 is the better default for dictation in most European languages: it is faster on the same Mac and made fewer errors in 15 of the 25 languages, with its biggest leads in Maltese, Lithuanian, and Estonian. It covers 25 European languages only.
Whisper large-v3-turbo wins in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Croatian, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Polish, and Greek, by the widest margin in Greek, and it is the only choice of the two for languages outside Europe (about 99 in all).
Both were run fully on the device. Read sentences in quiet rooms are easier than real dictation, and one test is not every voice: our other tests cover accents, background noise, Bluetooth headsets and long recordings.
Parakeet on your computer
Dictate with Parakeet v3 in any app.
Yap runs Parakeet v3 on your Mac or Windows PC, and on Android and iPhone: hold a key, talk, let go, and the text is typed wherever your cursor is. Each recording’s language is detected by itself, and your voice is never uploaded.
How we tested
- 100 recordings per language from the FLEURS test split, chosen by a fixed rule before any engine ran.
- Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 in Core ML through FluidAudio; Whisper large-v3-turbo, 5-bit quantized, through whisper.cpp with Metal. Both given the language.
- Word error rate: both texts lowercased and stripped of punctuation, then compared word by word.
- An Apple M2 Pro with 16 GB of memory; speed measured on a warm engine, one recording at a time.
Questions.
- Is Parakeet v3 more accurate than Whisper?
- In our test of 25 European languages, Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 made fewer word errors than Whisper large-v3-turbo in 15 languages and Whisper in 10. The median word error rate was 10.1% for Parakeet and 11.3% for Whisper. Whisper led most clearly in Greek, Finnish, and Swedish; Parakeet in Maltese, Lithuanian, and Estonian.
- Is Parakeet faster than Whisper?
- On an Apple M2 Pro, Parakeet transcribed a median of about 20 times faster than real time and Whisper large-v3-turbo (5-bit, on the GPU) about 13 times.
- Which languages does Parakeet v3 support?
- Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 recognizes 25 European languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Maltese. Whisper covers about 99 languages, including many outside Europe.
- Can I run Parakeet on a Mac or a Windows PC?
- Yes. Yap, a dictation app, runs Parakeet v3 on the device on Mac and Windows (and on Android and iPhone), so you hold a key, talk, and the text is typed into any app without uploading your voice.