AirCaps AI

A5S Streaming

Live transcripts that hold up in noise.

Real-time English speech-to-text over WebSocket. Words arrive as people speak, with optional live speaker labels, and stay accurate with distant microphones, music and crosstalk.

a5s-small-v2-streamingWebSocket API$0.30 per audio hour

LiveA dinner party, far-field microphone

Pending words in italics until they are final. Words from the CHiME-6 reference transcript (CC BY-SA 4.0), at speaking pace.

Made for live conversation.

Partial and final transcripts, live speakers and key terms over a single WebSocket.

Partial and final

Pending words arrive as people speak and may still change. Final words are sent once and never change.

Live speaker labels

Turn on diarization and every utterance and word is labeled by speaker as the conversation unfolds.

Names in real time

Add speaker_identification and enrolled people are named as they speak, through AirCaps Speaker ID.

Key terms

Up to 64 names and terms per session, each with its own strength, to catch jargon and proper nouns.

Noisy, far-field audio

Built for distant microphones, background music and people talking over each other.

Long sessions

Punctuated, cased text in sessions of up to 30 minutes, or up to 4 hours on request.

Ahead where audio is hard.

26.27%

word error rate across Mega-ASR, AMI, DiPCo and NOTSOFAR: the lowest of 9 streaming systems, ahead of ElevenLabs, Meta, AssemblyAI, OpenAI, xAI, Deepgram and Google.

Read the full evaluation

Where it fits.

Voice agents

Agents that hear people clearly

Accurate words in cars, kitchens, shops and offices, so an agent answers what was actually said.

Captions

Live captions

Captions for events, calls and broadcasts as people speak, with speakers marked when you need them.

Meetings

Real-time assistants

Live notes, prompts and summaries that know who is talking, while the meeting is still going.

Stream audio, get words back.

  • One WebSocket: wss://api.aircaps.com/v1/realtime
  • 16 kHz mono PCM16 in, JSON events out
  • Partial and final utterances with word times
  • Optional live speaker labels and names
import asyncio, json, os, websockets

async def main():
    headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['AIRCAPS_API_KEY']}"}
    async with websockets.connect("wss://api.aircaps.com/v1/realtime",
                                  additional_headers=headers) as ws:
        await ws.send(json.dumps({
            "type": "start", "providers": ["a5sv2"],
            "encoding": "pcm_s16le", "sample_rate": 16000, "channels": 1,
            "language": "en", "diarization": True,
        }))
        # send 20 ms PCM frames, then {"type": "finish"}
        async for message in ws:
            event = json.loads(message)
            if event["type"] == "transcript" and event["is_final"]:
                print(event["text"])

asyncio.run(main())

Specifications.

Everything else is in the model reference and limits.

Questions.

How do I connect?

Open a WebSocket to wss://api.aircaps.com/v1/realtime with your API key, send a start message, then stream 16 kHz mono PCM16 audio in 20 ms frames.

Are live speaker labels extra?

No. Live speaker labels are included at $0.30 per audio hour.

How accurate is it?

26.27% word error rate across four hard, real-world corpora, the lowest of the 9 streaming systems we tested. The research note has the per-corpus results.

How long can a session run?

Up to 30 minutes, or up to 4 hours on request. Each account can run 5 sessions at a time.

Which languages does it support?

English.

Do you train on my audio?

No. See Data and privacy in the docs.

Live transcripts that hold up.

Stream your own audio into A5S Streaming. Every account includes 5 free hours.