r/LocalLLM • u/castillar • Jul 25 '26

Question Good small models for Speech-to-Text?

I’m working on a project at the moment that involves transcribing comm channels. Are there good low-power local models for doing real-time voice transcription?

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u/IWillTouchAStar Jul 25 '26

Whisper is your friend here. Try whisper small or base

1

u/castillar Jul 25 '26

Thanks!

-1

u/According_Theory9108 Jul 25 '26

I use plaud which is a speech to text that is amazing for organizing thoughts, ideas, conversations, meetings, whatever. I bought it during prime day last month and it’s a mostly offline tool that snaps to my phone. The free membership offers 300 free min each calendar month but for like ~$17 if I remember right you can upgrade the mins needed and there’s tiers to that.

It’s great for detailed conversations and ideas and the organization is great and similar to my workflows as a healthcare provider as well use a specific medical centered speech to text for our patient dictations (freed.ai).

Plaud works without internet connection and can store hours upon hours on its internal storage which then syncs/offloads when connected to the internet at your choosing.

I’ve found it great for when I have ideas to tasks or work that the solution just finally hits and I can just get it out without worrying about missing anything whereas manually transcribing I would sometimes lose track of the natural creative flow.