# WhisperX Review

> WhisperX review: Whisper + forced alignment + diarization pipeline for accurate word timestamps. Verified pricing, features, and the strongest alternatives in.

![WhisperX logo](https://www.versusref.com/logos/whisperx.png)

Whisper + forced alignment + diarization pipeline for accurate word timestamps

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

## What we know about WhisperX

WhisperX sits in the speech-to-text apis category, where it is whisper + forced alignment + diarization pipeline for accurate word timestamps. We keep this WhisperX profile grounded in primary sources, each fact dated to when we last confirmed it.

WhisperX 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 WhisperX quote, it is the fastest way for us to close that gap.

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

In total we track 12 verified facts for WhisperX 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 WhisperX fact sheet below.

## Fact sheet

### Capabilities

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Language auto-detection | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |
| Speaker diarization | ✓  Included | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |
| Word-level timestamps | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |
| Priced audio-intelligence add-ons | 70x realtime batched inference (large-v2); VAD preproc | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |

### Compliance & trust

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Self-host / on-prem option | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |
| Model weights license | BSD-2-Clause | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |

### Build experience

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Official SDKs | Python | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |
| Websocket streaming API | ✗  No | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |

### Commercial

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Model size (parameters) | Wraps OpenAI Whisper models, tiny to large-v2/v3 | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |
| Hardware to self-host | GPU <8GB VRAM for large-v2 (beam 5); CPU/macOS OK | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |
| Project maintenance status | Active - v3.8.6 released 2026-05-25 | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |
| GitHub stars | 23,200 stars | Jul 20 | [source](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) |

Source: https://www.versusref.com/stt/tools/whisperx/