# Distil-Whisper Review

> Distil-Whisper review: Distilled Whisper: near-Whisper accuracy at a fraction of the size and up to 6x the speed, English-only, MIT-licensed. Verified pricing.

![Distil-Whisper logo](https://www.versusref.com/logos/distil-whisper.png)

Distilled Whisper: near-Whisper accuracy at a fraction of the size and up to 6x the speed, English-only, MIT-licensed

Among the 43 speech-to-text tools we track, Distil-Whisper has the 43rd-widest language coverage.

See pricing · Open source · facts verified Jul 20, 2026

## What we know about Distil-Whisper

This is our verified profile of Distil-Whisper, a speech-to-text apis platform - distilled Whisper: near-Whisper accuracy at a fraction of the size and up to 6x the speed, English-only, MIT-licensed. Every fact about Distil-Whisper below carries the source it came from and the day we checked it.

Distil-Whisper does not publish a public per-minute rate we have been able to verify, so the price figure here stays blank until we can confirm one. We would rather show nothing than a guessed number; if you have a current Distil-Whisper quote, it is the fastest way for us to close that gap.

On capabilities, Distil-Whisper covers word-level timestamps and self-host / on-prem option, and does not offer language auto-detection and speech translation. Each of those is verified against Distil-Whisper's own docs or dashboard, not marketing copy.

Placed against the 43 speech-to-text tools we track, Distil-Whisper's strongest showing is the 43rd-widest language coverage - a spread worth weighing against your own priorities.

In total we track 14 verified facts for Distil-Whisper today, each linking the primary source it came from so you can check our work - and vendor claims we have not measured ourselves are labeled as such on the Distil-Whisper fact sheet below.

## Fact sheet

### Capabilities

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| WER (vendor-claimed) | ~7.08 % WER | Jul 20 | [source](https://huggingface.co/distil-whisper/distil-large-v3.5) |
| Languages supported | 1 languages | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/huggingface/distil-whisper) |
| Language auto-detection | ✗  No | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/huggingface/distil-whisper) |
| Speaker diarization | ✗  Not available | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/huggingface/distil-whisper) |
| PII redaction | ✗  Not available | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/huggingface/distil-whisper) |
| Word-level timestamps | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://huggingface.co/distil-whisper/distil-large-v3) |
| Speech translation | ✗  No | Jul 20 | [source](https://huggingface.co/distil-whisper/distil-large-v3) |

### Compliance & trust

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Self-host / on-prem option | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/huggingface/distil-whisper) |
| Model weights license | MIT | Jul 20 | [source](https://huggingface.co/distil-whisper/distil-large-v3.5) |

### Build experience

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Official SDKs | Transformers, whisper.cpp, faster-whisper + more | Jul 20 | [source](https://huggingface.co/distil-whisper/distil-large-v3) |

### Commercial

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Model size (parameters) | 166M-756M across sizes; flagship 756M | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/huggingface/distil-whisper) |
| Hardware to self-host | CPU-capable; GPU recommended (FA2/SDPA supported) | Jul 20 | [source](https://huggingface.co/distil-whisper/distil-large-v3) |
| Project maintenance status | HF models updated 2026-04; GitHub last commit 2025-01 | Jul 20 | [source](https://huggingface.co/distil-whisper) |
| GitHub stars | 4,100 stars | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/huggingface/distil-whisper) |

Source: https://www.versusref.com/stt/tools/distil-whisper/