> For clean Markdown of any page, append .md to the page URL. > For a complete documentation index, see https://developers.deepgram.com/llms.txt. > For AI client integration (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.), connect to the MCP server at https://developers.deepgram.com/_mcp/server. # Getting Started with Deepgram Whisper Cloud Pre-recorded Streaming:Nova Using Deepgram's fully hosted Whisper Cloud instead of running your own version provides many benefits. Some of these benefits include: * Pairing the Whisper model with Deepgram features that you can’t get using the OpenAI speech-to-text API, such as diarization and word timings. * Support for all Whisper model sizes: tiny, base, small, medium, and large. * Support for up to 5 concurrent requests for the Pay As You Go and Growth plans. Deepgram hosts and maintains these Whisper models; they aren’t hosted or run by Open AI. Therefore, data sent through API requests for our Whisper models will not be sent to OpenAI. Live streaming is not available with Deepgram Whisper Cloud. If you would like to transcribe live streamed audio, we recommend using our Nova-3 model. [This guide](/docs/live-streaming-audio) can help you get started. ## Getting Started In this guide, you’ll learn how to transcribe pre-recorded audio using Deepgram’s hosted Whisper API. ### Create a Deepgram Account Before you can use Deepgram, you'll need to [create a Deepgram account](https://console.deepgram.com/signup?jump=keys). Signup is free and includes **\$200** in free credit and access to all of Deepgram's features! ### Create a Deepgram API Key Before you start, you'll need to follow the steps in the [Make Your First API Request](/guides/fundamentals/make-your-first-api-request) guide to obtain a Deepgram API key, and configure your environment if you are choosing to use a Deepgram SDK. ### Transcribe a Remote File Transcribe a remote file using Deepgram's Whisper API with the following request. **`cURL`** ```bash cURL curl \ --request POST \ --header 'Authorization: Token YOUR_DEEPGRAM_API_KEY' \ --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \ --data '{"url":"https://static.deepgram.com/examples/Bueller-Life-moves-pretty-fast.wav}' \ --url 'https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=whisper' ``` If you would like to use a Deepgram SDK to make the request, follow the steps in the [Pre-Recorded speech-to-text ](/docs/pre-recorded-audio)guide, but change the model to `whisper`. Replace `YOUR_DEEPGRAM_API_KEY` with your [Deepgram API Key](/docs/create-additional-api-keys). ### Analyze Response **`JSON`** ```json JSON { "metadata": { "transaction_key": "deprecated", "request_id": "6ba2879c...", "sha256": "6a7d98...", "created": "2023-04-12T20:33:53.620Z", "duration": 96.56319, "channels": 1, "models": [ "e04910..." ], "model_info": { "e04910...": { "name": "medium-en-whisper", "version": "2022-09-21.4", "arch": "whisper" } } }, "results": { "channels": [ { "alternatives": [ { "transcript": "another big problem in the speech analytics space when customers first bring the software on is that they are blown away by the fact that an engine can monitor hundreds of kpis ...", "confidence": 0.98273027, "words": [ { "word": "another", "start": 0.06, "end": 0.56, "confidence": 0.34510013 }, { "word": "big", "start": 0.84, "end": 1.3399999, "confidence": 0.9840386 }, { "word": "problem", "start": 1.54, "end": 2.04, "confidence": 0.9970716 }, ... ] } ] } ] } } ``` ## Enable Whisper Model and Sizes To enable Deepgram’s Whisper API, add a model parameter in the query string and set it to `model=whisper` **`Bash`** ```bash Bash https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=whisper ``` To enable a specific size of the Whisper model, set the model parameter to `model=whisper-size`. **`Bash`** ```bash Bash https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=whisper-SIZE ``` If `model=whisper` is supplied and no model size specified, the model size will default to `model=whisper-medium`. These are the Deepgram Whisper Cloud models available: * `model=whisper` (defaults to whisper-medium) * `model=whisper-tiny` * `model=whisper-base` * `model=whisper-small` * `model=whisper-medium` * `model=whisper-large` (defaults to large-v2) ## Other Features ### Language Detection Deepgram Whisper Cloud supports language detection, which means just by setting `detect_language=true`, your audio will be transcribed in the detected language. Officially supported languages include Afrikaans, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Marathi, Maori, Nepali, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Welsh. ([Source: "Whisper API FAQ"](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7031512-whisper-api-faq)) #### Supported languages Languages supported by whisper include: `en`, `zh`, `de`, `es`, `ru`, `ko`, `fr`, `ja`, `pt`, `tr`, `pl`, `ca`, `nl`, `ar`, `sv`, `it`, `id`, `hi`, `fi`, `vi`, `he`, `uk`, `el`, `ms`, `cs`, `ro`, `da`, `hu`, `ta`, `no`, `th`, `ur`, `hr`, `bg`, `lt`, `la`, `mi`, `ml`, `cy`, `sk`, `te`, `fa`, `lv`, `bn`, `sr`, `az`, `sl`, `kn`, `et`, `mk`, `br`, `eu`, `is`, `hy`, `ne`, `mn`, `bs`, `kk`, `sq`, `sw`, `gl`, `mr`, `pa`, `si`, `km`, `sn`, `yo`, `so`, `af`, `oc`, `ka`, `be`, `tg`, `sd`, `gu`, `am`, `yi`, `lo`, `uz`, `fo`, `ht`, `ps`, `tk`, `nn`, `mt`, `sa`, `lb`, `my`, `bo`, `tl`, `mg`, `as`, `tt`, `haw`, `ln`, `ha`, `ba`, `jw`, `su`. If you would like to transcribe audio in a specific language, you can do so by setting the language parameter in the query string. You can pass in any language code supported by [Whisper](https://github.com/openai/whisper/blob/main/whisper/tokenizer.py) through our `language` parameter. To learn more about languages, see [Language](/docs/language/). ``` https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=whisper&language=en ``` ### Deepgram Features This is a list of Deepgram Features and their current status for use with Deepgram Whisper Cloud: | Feature | Status | | ------------------- | ------ | | Alternatives | ✅ | | Callbacks | ✅ | | Speaker Diarization | ✅ | | Entity Detection | ❌ | | Find and Replace | ✅ | | Keywords | ❌ | | Language Detection | ✅ | | Multichannel | ✅ | | Numerals | ✅ | | Paragraphs | ✅ | | Profanity Filter | ❌ | | Redaction | ✅ | | Search | ❌ | | Smart Format | ✅ | | Summarization | ✅ | | Topic Detection | ✅ | | Utterances | ✅ | ## Caveats * It's important to understand that Whisper models are less scalable than all other Deepgram models due to their inherent model architecture. Deepgram's non-Whisper models will return results faster and scale to a higher load, so we recommend using a Deepgram model such as Nova if it can meet your needs. * There is a 10 minute time out for all Deepgram models. Transcription requests that run longer than 10 minutes will return a 504 error. * Whisper models are not available on the [EU endpoint](/reference/custom-endpoints#eu-endpoint). If you require EU data residency, use a Deepgram model such as Nova-3. ---