Telenow
Speech-to-text (STT)BYOK supported

OpenAI Whisper for AI voice agents

OpenAI Whisper is one of the speech-to-text engines you can run a Telenow AI voice agent on. Higher accuracy, non-streaming — better for batch. Use OpenAI Whisper to transcribe the caller in real time so your agent understands every word, even with accents and code-switching. Mix and match it with any LLM, STT, TTS and carrier — Telenow is component-level, so you're never locked in.

Last updated 2026-09-16

OpenAI Whisper speech-to-text

Batch~1400ms partials

Languages

EnglishSpanishFrenchGermanHindiPortugueseJAZH

Frequently asked questions

Can OpenAI Whisper transcribe live phone calls?+

Yes — OpenAI Whisper streams real-time transcription into your Telenow agent so it understands the caller as they speak.

Which languages does OpenAI Whisper support?+

English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, JA, and ZH.

Is OpenAI Whisper fast enough for a live call?+

OpenAI Whisper is built for low-latency streaming, so partial transcripts arrive in well under a second — fast enough for natural back-and-forth.

How much does OpenAI Whisper cost for a voice agent?+

You pay OpenAI Whisper's usage at cost plus Telenow's transparent platform fee — billed per component (speech, model, telephony) and per minute, with new accounts getting free signup credit to try it.

Can I bring my own OpenAI Whisper API key?+

Yes. Telenow supports BYOK — paste your own OpenAI Whisper key to bill OpenAI Whisper usage to your account, or use the platform key and pay through Telenow.

Other speech-to-text (stt) options

Telenow Smart (language routing)
One STT that routes each language to the best recognizer — an always-on multilingual anchor plus per-language specialists, picked live by audio language-ID. Routing (anchor + specialists + margin) is configured centrally under Admin → STT routing, so there are no per-agent settings.
Deepgram
Nova-3 multilingual (real-time code-switching); sub-300 ms partials.
Sarvam (Saaras)
India-native ASR — up to 22 Indic languages + English, Hinglish code-mixing, transliteration & translation, streaming.
ElevenLabs Scribe v2 Realtime
Streaming multilingual STT (90+ languages), ~150 ms first partials.
AWS Transcribe
Streaming Hindi + Indian-English with en/hi code-switch; Mumbai region for data residency.
Soniox
Real-time multilingual STT — strong Hindi + code-switching, token-streaming.
xAI (Grok)
Grok streaming STT — 25 languages, ~300 ms partials; same key as the Grok LLM.
Groq (Whisper-Large)
Whisper-large running on Groq — much faster than OpenAI Whisper.
Google Gemini STT
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe (live) — streaming partials over the Gemini Live API, 85+ locales, automatic language detection that code-switches inside a sentence with no configuration. Indian locales except Tamil. Same key as the Gemini LLM.
Custom STT (bring your own endpoint)
Point at any real-time WebSocket STT endpoint. Describe your vendor’s wire format once as a JSON descriptor and we map it to transcripts — no code. MVP: WebSocket transport.
$1.00 free credit on signup

Build a voice agent with OpenAI Whisper

Sign up free and get $1.00 in credit — no card required. Connect your number, pick a template, and go live in minutes.

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