# sherpa-onnx Review

> sherpa-onnx review: On-device ASR/TTS runtime for edge and embedded. Verified pricing, features, and the strongest alternatives in Speech-to-text APIs.

![sherpa-onnx logo](https://www.versusref.com/logos/sherpa-onnx.png)

On-device ASR/TTS runtime for edge and embedded

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

## What we know about sherpa-onnx

This is our verified profile of sherpa-onnx, a speech-to-text apis platform - on-device ASR/TTS runtime for edge and embedded. Every fact about sherpa-onnx below carries the source it came from and the day we checked it.

sherpa-onnx 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 sherpa-onnx quote, it is the fastest way for us to close that gap.

On capabilities, sherpa-onnx covers word-level timestamps, custom vocabulary / keyterm boosting, self-host / on-prem option, and websocket streaming api, and does not offer entity detection, sentiment analysis, and summarization endpoint. Each of those is verified against sherpa-onnx's own docs or dashboard, not marketing copy.

For compliance, with sherpa-onnx: SOC 2 Type II is not reported. If you are in a regulated space, confirm the current posture with sherpa-onnx before you commit, since these change plan by plan.

In total we track 19 verified facts for sherpa-onnx 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 sherpa-onnx fact sheet below.

## Fact sheet

### Capabilities

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Speaker diarization | ✓  Included | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/index.html) |
| PII redaction | ✗  Not available | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/index.html) |
| Word-level timestamps | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/sense-voice/python-api.html) |
| Custom vocabulary / keyterm boosting | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/hotwords/index.html) |
| Entity detection | ✗  No | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/index.html) |
| Sentiment analysis | ✗  No | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/index.html) |
| Summarization endpoint | ✗  No | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/index.html) |
| Speech translation | ✗  No | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/index.html) |
| Priced audio-intelligence add-ons | VAD, punctuation, audio tagging, keyword spotting, lang ID | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/index.html) |

### Compliance & trust

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| HIPAA BAA available | ✗  Not available | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx) |
| SOC 2 Type II | ✗  No | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx) |
| Self-host / on-prem option | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/index.html) |
| Model weights license | Apache-2.0 | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx) |

### Build experience

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Official SDKs | Python, C++, C, C#, Go, Java, Kotlin, Swift, Rust, Dart, JS | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/index.html) |
| Websocket streaming API | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx) |

### Commercial

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Hardware to self-host | CPU; also GPU/NPU (Jetson, Qualcomm, RKNN, Ascend) | Jul 20 | [source](https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/index.html) |
| Hosted API available | No - self-hosted runtime library only | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx) |
| Project maintenance status | Active - v1.13.4 released 2026-07 | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx/releases/tag/v1.13.4) |
| GitHub stars | 13,670 stars | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx) |

Source: https://www.versusref.com/stt/tools/sherpa-onnx/