Best Open Speech Recognition (ASR) Models in 2026: WER, Languages, Latency, and License Compared

Open speech recognition models have moved beyond a single dominant option, with multiple models now performing within one percentage point of each other on standard accuracy tests. Because these top models are so close in accuracy, the practical choice between them depends on other factors like licensing, language support, speed of processing, and streaming capability rather than raw performance rankings. The source text compares leading open-source speech recognition models across these dimensions while noting that published accuracy scores can be misleading when models are tested on different datasets or fine-tuned specifically for benchmark performance.