Model reference · open weights
higgs-audio-stt is an open-weight audio or speech model from bosonai. higgs-audio-v3-stt (BF16) weighs 5.4 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 3060 12 GB.
For self-hosting, compare this build's requirements below with the GPU you plan to rent.
Summary of the bosonai/higgs-audio-v3-8b-stt-v2 model card, 2026-10-01. The estimate below is for another build of the family.
What it is
| Released by | bosonai |
|---|---|
| Released | 2026-04-27 |
| Parameters | 8.9B |
| VRAM | 5.4 GB for the weights |
What it runs on
| Card | One stream | Memory |
|---|---|---|
| RTX 3060 12 GB | fits | 11.6 GB |
| RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB | fits | 15.4 GB |
| RTX 3090 24 GB | fits | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 4090 24 GB | fits | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 5090 32 GB | fits | 31.0 GB |
| L40S 48 GB | fits | 44.0 GB |
| A100 80 GB | fits | 78.2 GB |
| H100 80 GB | fits | 78.1 GB |
| RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB | fits | 93.8 GB |
| DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified | fits | 107 GB |
| H200 141 GB | fits | 138 GB |
| B200 180 GB | fits | 176 GB |
Builds
| Build | Params | Precision | Weights | Smallest setup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| higgs-audio-v3-8b-stt-v2 ↗ | 8.9B | BF16 | 17.8 GB | RTX 4090 24 GB |
| higgs-audio-v3-stt (above) ↗ | 2.7B | BF16 | 5.4 GB | RTX 3060 12 GB |
From the model card
A speech-to-text model combining a Whisper-Large-v3 encoder with a Qwen3-8B decoder (8.91B total parameters), fine-tuned with LoRA on diverse ASR benchmarks.
import torch
import numpy as np
from transformers import AutoModel, AutoTokenizer
# Load model
model = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
"bosonai/higgs-audio-v3-8b-stt-v2",
torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,
trust_remote_code=True,
attn_implementation="eager",
device_map="cuda:0",
)
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("bosonai/higgs-audio-v3-8b-stt-v2")
# Transcribe audio (16kHz mono numpy array)
from transformers.utils import cached_file
import importlib.util
spec = importlib.util.spec_from_file_location("transcribe", cached_file("bosonai/higgs-audio-v3-8b-stt-v2", "transcribe.py", _raise_exceptions_for_connection_errors=False))
mod = importlib.util.module_from_spec(spec)
spec.loader.exec_module(mod)
audio_np = np.random.randn(16000).astype(np.float32) # replace with your audio
text = mod.transcribe(model, tokenizer, audio_np)
print(text)
torch
transformers>=4.51.0
whisper # for audio preprocessing (WhisperProcessor)
| Dataset | WER |
|---|---|
| AMI | 10.14% |
| Earnings22 | 8.73% |
| GigaSpeech | 8.47% |
| LibriSpeech Clean | 1.25% |
| LibriSpeech Other | 2.38% |
| SPGISpeech | 3.60% |
| TED-LIUM | 3.09% |
| VoxPopuli | 5.92% |
| Average | 5.449% |
Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.
Benchmarks
As published on the model card: the maker's own numbers, not measured by AxForge.
| Task | Dataset | Metric | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automatic Speech Recognition | AMI (Meetings test) | Test WER | 10.140 |
| Automatic Speech Recognition | Earnings-22 | Test WER | 8.730 |
| Automatic Speech Recognition | GigaSpeech | Test WER | 8.470 |
| Automatic Speech Recognition | LibriSpeech (clean) | Test WER | 1.250 |
| Automatic Speech Recognition | LibriSpeech (other) | Test WER | 2.380 |
| Automatic Speech Recognition | SPGI Speech | Test WER | 3.600 |
| Automatic Speech Recognition | tedlium-v3 | Test WER | 3.090 |
| Automatic Speech Recognition | Vox Populi | Test WER | 5.920 |