HuggingFace Optimum

by Hugging Face

ONNX + TensorRT + OpenVINO acceleration for Transformers ASR models.

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TL;DR

Best for exporting Whisper / Wav2Vec2 / SeamlessM4T to ONNX/TensorRT/OpenVINO for prod. Pricing: free.

Category
Open source
License
Apache-2.0
Stars
★ 3.5k
Last push
2026-08-04
Pricing
free
Platforms
Linux, macOS, Windows

What it is

Optimum bridges transformers with hardware acceleration backends and quantization tools. Apache-2.0.

Best for: Exporting Whisper / Wav2Vec2 / SeamlessM4T to ONNX/TensorRT/OpenVINO for prod.
Watch out for: Many models require manual config overrides; quantization not always loss-free.

Install / use

pip install optimum[onnxruntime]

Features

Speaker diarizationNo
Word-level timestampsYes
Streaming / real-timeNo
Languages supported100
HIPAA eligibleNo

Links

GitHub repo ↗

HuggingFace Optimum vs Whipscribe

FeatureHuggingFace OptimumWhipscribe
CategoryOpen sourceTranscription APIs
Pricingfree$4–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · $2 single unlock · 60 min free on signup
Speaker diarizationNoYes
Word timestampsYesYes
StreamingNoNo
Languages10099
PlatformsLinux, macOS, WindowsWeb, API, MCP

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