Model reference · open weights

higgs-audio-stt

Audio bosonai Speech→text 2 builds Open weights 19k dl/mo

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.

  • Higgs-Audio-STT is an automatic speech recognition model developed by BosonAI that combines a Whisper-Large-v3 encoder with a Qwen3-8B decoder.
  • The model contains 8.91 billion parameters and supports a context length of 32,768 tokens for English audio input.
  • It is released under the Apache 2.0 license.

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 bybosonai
Released2026-04-27
Parameters8.9B
VRAM5.4 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for higgs-audio-v3-stt (BF16)

5.4 GBweights, file size
1.6 GBruntime overhead
CardOne streamMemory
RTX 3060 12 GBfits11.6 GB
RTX 4060 Ti 16 GBfits15.4 GB
RTX 3090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GBfits31.0 GB
L40S 48 GBfits44.0 GB
A100 80 GBfits78.2 GB
H100 80 GBfits78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GBfits93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unifiedfits107 GB
H200 141 GBfits138 GB
B200 180 GBfits176 GB

Builds

Sizes, precisions & builds

BuildParamsPrecisionWeightsSmallest setup
higgs-audio-v3-8b-stt-v2 ↗ 8.9BBF16 17.8 GBRTX 4090 24 GB
higgs-audio-v3-stt (above) ↗ 2.7BBF16 5.4 GBRTX 3060 12 GB

From the model card

What bosonai says about higgs-audio-stt

Read 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.

Usage

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)

Requirements

torch
transformers>=4.51.0
whisper  # for audio preprocessing (WhisperProcessor)

Architecture

  • Encoder: Whisper-Large-v3 (frozen)
  • Decoder: Qwen3-8B (LoRA fine-tuned, merged)
  • Total parameters: 8.91B
  • Audio input: 16kHz mono WAV
  • Supports: Thinking mode for improved accuracy

Performance (ESB Benchmark — Full Scale, All Samples)

DatasetWER
AMI10.14%
Earnings228.73%
GigaSpeech8.47%
LibriSpeech Clean1.25%
LibriSpeech Other2.38%
SPGISpeech3.60%
TED-LIUM3.09%
VoxPopuli5.92%
Average5.449%

Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.

Benchmarks

Reported results

As published on the model card: the maker's own numbers, not measured by AxForge.

TaskDatasetMetricScore
Automatic Speech RecognitionAMI (Meetings test)Test WER10.140
Automatic Speech RecognitionEarnings-22Test WER8.730
Automatic Speech RecognitionGigaSpeechTest WER8.470
Automatic Speech RecognitionLibriSpeech (clean)Test WER1.250
Automatic Speech RecognitionLibriSpeech (other)Test WER2.380
Automatic Speech RecognitionSPGI SpeechTest WER3.600
Automatic Speech Recognitiontedlium-v3Test WER3.090
Automatic Speech RecognitionVox PopuliTest WER5.920
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