Model Options

model string Default: base-general

Deepgram’s Model feature allows you to supply a model to use when processing submitted audio. To learn more about the pricing for our different models, see Deepgram Pricing & Plans.

Models & Model Options

Below are a list of all model and model options that can be used with the Deepgram API.

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The concept of Tiers is now deprecated but still available in the Deepgram API. Please see our documentation on Tiers for how they still can be used.

Nova-2

Examples

https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=nova-2

https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=nova-2-phonecall

Nova-2 expands on Nova-1's advancements with speech-specific optimizations to the underlying Transformer architecture, advanced data curation techniques, and a multi-stage training methodology. These changes yield reduced word error rate (WER) and enhancements to entity recognition (i.e. proper nouns, alphanumerics, etc.), punctuation, and capitalization.

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Nova-2 has the following model options which can be called by using the following syntax: model=nova-2-{option}

general: Optimized for everyday audio processing.
meeting: Optimized for conference room settings, which include multiple speakers with a single microphone.
phonecall: Optimized for low-bandwidth audio phone calls.
voicemail: Optimized for low-bandwidth audio clips with a single speaker. Derived from the phonecall model.
finance: Optimized for multiple speakers with varying audio quality, such as might be found on a typical earnings call. Vocabulary is heavily finance oriented.
conversationalai: Optimized for use cases in which a human is talking to an automated bot, such as IVR, a voice assistant, or an automated kiosk.
video: Optimized for audio sourced from videos.
medical: Optimized for audio with medical oriented vocabulary.
drivethru: Optimized for audio sources from drivethrus.
automotive: Optimized for audio with automative oriented vocabulary.
atc: Optimized for audio from air traffic control.

Nova

Examples

https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=nova

https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=nova-phonecall

Nova is the predecessor to Nova-2. Training on this model spans over 100 domains and 47 billion tokens, making it the deepest-trained automatic speech recognition (ASR) model to date. Nova doesn't just excel in one specific domain — it is ideal for a wide array of voice applications that require high accuracy in diverse contexts.

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Nova has the following model options which can be called by using the following syntax: model=nova-{option}

general: Optimized for everyday audio processing. Likely to be more accurate than any region-specific Base model for the language for which it is enabled. If you aren't sure which model to select, start here.
phonecall: Optimized for low-bandwidth audio phone calls.

Enhanced

Examples

https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=enhanced

https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=enhanced-phonecall

Enhanced models are still some of our most powerful speech-to-text models; they generally have higher accuracy and better word recognition than our base models, and they handle uncommon words significantly better.

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Enhanced has the following model options which can be called by using the following syntax: model=enhanced-{option}

general: Optimized for everyday audio processing. Likely to be more accurate than any region-specific Base model for the language for which it is enabled. If you aren't sure which model to select, start here.
meeting beta: Optimized for conference room settings, which include multiple speakers with a single microphone.
phonecall: Optimized for low-bandwidth audio phone calls.
finance beta: Optimized for multiple speakers with varying audio quality, such as might be found on a typical earnings call. Vocabulary is heavily finance oriented.

The Enhanced models can be called with the following syntax:

Base

Examples

https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=base

https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=base-phonecall

Base models are built on our signature end-to-end deep learning speech-to-text model architecture. They offer a solid combination of accuracy and cost effectiveness in some cases.

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Base has the following model options which can be called by using the following syntax: model=base-{option}

general: (Default) Optimized for everyday audio processing.
meeting: Optimized for conference room settings, which include multiple speakers with a single microphone.
phonecall: Optimized for low-bandwidth audio phone calls.
voicemail: Optimized for low-bandwidth audio clips with a single speaker. Derived from the phonecall model.
finance: Optimized for multiple speakers with varying audio quality, such as might be found on a typical earnings call. Vocabulary is heavily finance oriented.
conversationalai: Optimized for use cases in which a human is talking to an automated bot, such as IVR, a voice assistant, or an automated kiosk.
video: Optimized for audio sourced from videos.

Custom

You may also use a custom, trained model associated with your account by including its custom_id.

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Custom models are only available to Enterprise customers. See Deepgram Pricing & Plans for more details.

Whisper

Examples

https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=whisper

https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=whisper-SIZE

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Whisper models are less scalable than all other Deepgram models due to their inherent model architecture. All non-Whisper models will return results faster and scale to higher load.

Deepgram's Whisper Cloud is a fully managed API that gives you access to Deepgram's version of OpenAI’s Whisper model. Read our guide Deepgram Whisper Cloud for a deeper dive into this offering.

Deepgram's Whisper models have the following size options:

tiny: Contains 39 M parameters. The smallest model available.
base: Contains 74 M parameters.
small: Contains 244 M parameters.
medium: Contains 769 M parameters. The default model if you don't specify a size.
large: Contains 1550 M parameters. The largest model available. Defaults to OpenAI’s Whisper large-v2.

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Additional rate limits apply to Whisper due to poor scalability. Requests to Whisper are limited to 15 concurrent requests with a paid plan and 5 concurrent requests with the pay-as-you-go plan. Long audio files are supported up to a maximum of 20 minutes of processing time (the maximum length of the audio depends on the size of the Whisper model).

Try it out

To transcribe audio from a file on your computer using a particular model, run the following curl command in a terminal or your favorite API client.

curl \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Authorization: Token YOUR_DEEPGRAM_API_KEY' \
  --header 'Content-Type: audio/wav' \
  --data-binary @youraudio.wav \
  --url 'https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=OPTION'

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Replace YOUR_DEEPGRAM_API_KEY with your Deepgram API Key.