Speech to text

NVIDIA Parakeet / Canary / Nemotron Speech

Fast NVIDIA speech recognition models, including streaming ones for real-time use. Parakeet TDT v3 and Nemotron 3.5 ASR understand Russian.

Developer
NVIDIA, USA
First release
Dec 2023
Latest release
May 2026
Sizes
110M – 2.5B
License
Commercial use with conditionsMixed: Parakeet and Canary mostly CC-BY-4.0 (the first Canary-1B is non-commercial), Parakeet Unified and Nemotron Speech Streaming under the NVIDIA Open Model License, Nemotron 3.5 ASR under OpenMDW
Russian
Supported
Running
On your own serverAlso runs without a GPU
Industries
Customer support, Media and production, Documents and accounting
Deploy on your server Hugging Face GitHub

What it does

  • Transcribing calls and meetings
  • Video subtitles
  • Real-time voice input
  • Tagging audio archives

Where it is used

Call centersMediaVoice botsInternal company services

Hardware requirements

LaptopLaptop or regular PC, up to 8 GB of VRAM — smaller versions
fits
1 GPUOne GPU with 16–80 GB — mid-size versions
fits
ClusterServer with several GPUs — flagship versions
no versions

Versions

  1. Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6B
  2. Parakeet Unified 0.6B
  3. Nemotron Speech Streaming 0.6B
  4. Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 и Canary-1B v2
  5. Canary-Qwen-2.5B
  6. Parakeet TDT 0.6B v2
  7. Canary-1B
  8. Parakeet CTC 0.6B

How to run it

On your own serverWeights are downloaded from Hugging Face and served with vLLM (load and API) or llama.cpp (modest hardware). The model then runs in a closed network with no per-request fees.Hugging Face
How much hardware you needCalculate the VRAM for the model size, context length and number of concurrent requests.Open the hardware calculator

I can set this up end to end: pick the model size, deploy it on your server and connect it to your systems.

Frequently asked questions

Can NVIDIA Parakeet / Canary / Nemotron Speech be used in a commercial project?

With conditions. License: Mixed: Parakeet and Canary mostly CC-BY-4.0 (the first Canary-1B is non-commercial), Parakeet Unified and Nemotron Speech Streaming under the NVIDIA Open Model License, Nemotron 3.5 ASR under OpenMDW. Restrictions vary — region, company revenue, attribution requirements. Have a lawyer check the terms before a commercial launch.

What hardware does NVIDIA Parakeet / Canary / Nemotron Speech need?

At minimum: Laptop or regular PC, up to 8 GB of VRAM — smaller versions. Some versions also run on an ordinary CPU, without a GPU. You can calculate the exact VRAM for your model size and context in the hardware calculator.

Does NVIDIA Parakeet / Canary / Nemotron Speech support Russian?

Yes, Russian is listed on the model card.

Where can I download NVIDIA Parakeet / Canary / Nemotron Speech and what does it cost?

The NVIDIA Parakeet / Canary / Nemotron Speech weights are open and free to download. You only pay for the hardware it runs on and for the setup. Source links are at the bottom of this page.

How I deploy it for clients

  1. SelectionI pick the model size for your task and hardware and test it on your examples.
  2. DeploymentI deploy it on your server or in a closed network and provide an API.
  3. Fine-tuningI fine-tune it on your data (LoRA) or connect a knowledge base — whichever is cheaper for the task.
  4. IntegrationI connect it to your CRM, ERP, bot, website or team chat and set up monitoring.

Comparisons

Similar models

Speech to textWhisperOpenAI · USACommercial use allowed

Speech recognition in 99 languages, including Russian. The de facto standard for transcribing calls and meetings. Hugging Face's faster Distil-Whisper is English only.

DetailsSpeech to textGigaAMSber · RussiaCommercial use allowed

Sber's models for Russian speech recognition, among the most accurate for Russian. Includes emotion recognition, v3 with punctuation, and a multilingual version (Russian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek).

DetailsSpeech to textQwen3-ASRAlibaba (Qwen) · ChinaCommercial use allowed

Speech recognition models from the Qwen team for 50+ languages, including Russian. They handle noise, singing and accents well.

Details

Source: huggingface.co/nvidia/nemotron-3.5-asr-streaming-0.6b. Data checked against the model card on 22 Sep 2026. Have a lawyer review the license before commercial launch.