Practical overview
When it fits
Use it when you want to run a Whisper-based transcription API on your own Docker or Python infrastructure and choose the engine, model and CPU/GPU device. It also suits workflows that need subtitle formats, word timestamps, voice activity detection or WhisperX diarization.
Who it is for
- Developers adding speech recognition to an application through a REST API.
- Teams operating an internal transcription service for audio and video.
- Builders creating captioning or multilingual transcription workflows.
- Users who need timestamped or speaker-labeled transcripts from a self-managed service.
Documented uses
- Transcribe audio or video and return text or structured output.
- Generate VTT or SRT captions from recognized speech.
- Build speech-translation or language-identification workflows.
- Produce word-level timestamps and, with WhisperX, speaker diarization.
- Expose transcription as a REST API for application integration.
Requirements & limits
The repository is public and identifies the software as MIT-licensed. Deployment examples use Docker or a local Python environment.
- Choose CPU or GPU deployment according to the host setup; the README provides examples for both.
- Select the ASR engine and model through configuration; supported engines include OpenAI Whisper, Faster-Whisper and WhisperX.
- Speaker diarization is specifically associated with WhisperX.
- A persistent cache mount is documented as a way to avoid repeated model downloads and reduce container startup time.
- Swagger documentation is available at the service's local address after startup.
Check current requirements in the official documentation. Source-based guidance does not mean OpenViST has run or independently tested this project.
Start the API in a CPU Docker container
Launch the documented service container with a selected Whisper model and engine.
Before you start
- Docker
- A host capable of running the container
Steps
Run the repository's CPU Docker command, mapping port 9000 and setting ASR_MODEL=base and ASR_ENGINE=openai_whisper.
Open the service at localhost:9000 to access its Swagger UI and inspect the API documentation.
Expected outcome
A CPU-configured service container is launched with the Swagger UI available at the documented local address.
Guide limitations
- This setup recipe does not document a transcription request or an output result.
- The example uses the base model and OpenAI Whisper engine; other engine and model choices are configuration options.
Sources & review
Source record details
- Source availability
- Active
- Sources checked
- 14 October 2026
- Original website title
- ahmetoner/whisper-asr-webservice · Official homepage title · retained in its source language

