USASI
Model release

Whisper large-v3-turbo

Release in the Whisper family · version large-v3-turbo

Maintained by OpenAI54

Whisper large-v3-turbo is a multilingual speech recognition model that OpenAI derived from Whisper large-v3 by cutting the decoder from 32 layers to 4 and fine-tuning for two more epochs. It has about 0.8 billion parameters (809M in the README and Hugging Face card; the repository model card lists 798M) and is the default model in the openai-whisper package.4615

Last reviewedEntry updated Documented release Sep 2024

Availability and license

Overall availability

Public

Downloadable without gating from Hugging Face, and fetched automatically by the openai-whisper package when the "turbo" or "large-v3-turbo" model is loaded.28

Availability is separate from permission: read the license before using or redistributing.

The README states that Whisper's code and model weights are released under the MIT License, and the Hugging Face card for this model also lists MIT.61

Model-disclosure tier

Computed from the checklist below using USASI rubric v0.1. An editorial category, not a certification.
Model-disclosure tier (USASI rubric v0.1): Open-weight

The model parameters for this release can be downloaded by the public. License terms may still restrict use, redistribution, or commercial use.

How tiers are computed

Public materials checklist

Items for a model under USASI rubric v0.1. Unknown means unassessed or insufficient evidence.
Public materials checklist for Whisper large-v3-turbo
ItemStatusNotes and evidence
WeightsCan the general public download the model parameters for this release?PublicPublished on Hugging Face without gating and downloadable through the openai-whisper package.28
Inference codeIs code for running the model published?PublicThe openai/whisper repository provides the inference code and command-line tool; the Hugging Face card documents inference with Transformers.61
Training codeIs the code used to train the model published?UnknownThe repository covers inference and evaluation-data preparation; this review found no published training code.6
Training-data informationPublic = the training data itself can be obtained. Partial = composition or sources are documented without full access.PartialOpenAI says turbo was fine-tuned on the same amount of multilingual transcription data used to train large-v3, excluding translation data. The large-v3 training mixture (1 million hours of weakly labeled audio and 4 million hours pseudo-labeled with large-v2) is described but not released.43
Training recipeAre the training configuration and procedure documented in enough detail to follow?PartialThe release discussion describes the procedure at a high level (decoder reduced to 4 layers, two further epochs of fine-tuning); no training configuration is published.4
Evaluation materialsPublic = evaluation code or prompts that let others re-run the evaluations are published. Partial = results only.PartialThe release discussion reports comparisons with other Whisper models. The repository's data README documents how the paper's evaluation datasets were prepared, but no turbo-specific evaluation scripts were located.49

What it is useful for

The README presents turbo as a faster version of large-v3 for transcription with a small loss of accuracy. It is not trained for translation: it returns the source language even when the translate task is requested, and the README directs users to the other multilingual models, such as medium or large, for translation into English.64

Run and use notes

Documented facts only. No hardware or performance claims are made without a cited source and stated assumptions.
  • The README documents running the model from the command line or Python with the openai-whisper package (which requires ffmpeg) using the model name "turbo"; the Hugging Face card documents use through the Transformers speech-recognition pipeline.61

Organization context

Provenance and derivatives

Derived by OpenAI from its own Whisper large-v3: the decoder was pruned from 32 to 4 layers and the model was fine-tuned for two more epochs on large-v3's multilingual transcription data.41

Other releases in the Whisper family

Whisper family overview

U.S. eligibility

Project eligibility rests on documented governing or maintaining entities, not on contributors.

Eligible · basis: U.S. headquarters

The model was released by OpenAI in its openai/whisper repository and on its Hugging Face account. OpenAI Group PBC lists its address as 1455 3rd Street, San Francisco, California, in a February 2026 agreement filed with the SEC.5410

Assessed Sep 29, 2026

Sources

  1. 1.
    openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo model card (external site: huggingface.co)

    OpenAI (Hugging Face) · Model card · accessed Sep 29, 2026

  2. 2.
  3. 3.
    openai/whisper-large-v3 model card (external site: huggingface.co)

    OpenAI (Hugging Face) · Model card · accessed Sep 29, 2026

  4. 4.
    Whisper large-v3-turbo model (openai/whisper discussion #2363) (external site: github.com)

    OpenAI (GitHub) · Release notes · published Oct 1, 2024 · accessed Sep 29, 2026

  5. 5.
    Model Card: Whisper (external site: github.com)

    OpenAI (GitHub) · Model card · accessed Sep 29, 2026

  6. 6.
    openai/whisper README (external site: github.com)

    OpenAI (GitHub) · Repository · accessed Sep 29, 2026

  7. 7.
    openai/whisper LICENSE (external site: github.com)

    OpenAI (GitHub) · License · accessed Sep 29, 2026

  8. 8.
  9. 9.
  10. 10.
    Exhibit 10.1: Equity commitment letter agreement between OpenAI Group PBC and Amazon (external site: sec.gov)

    U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Amazon.com, Inc. filing) · Filing · published Feb 27, 2026 · accessed Sep 29, 2026

This listing is not an endorsement, a safety assessment, or a federal approval.

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