Head to head · Speech-to-text · October 2026 research run

Ming-3.0-asr-tiny vs Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B

Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ming-3.0-asr-tiny's 54.8 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do speech-to-text.

Best speech-to-text APIs for AI agents · All 386 stt comparisons

Which one, for what

Ming-3.0-asr-tiny C

Best for Agents with a CUDA GPU that need local Chinese, English or dialect transcription where names and domain terms matter

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

Loading runs the publisher's Python with trust_remote_code, and the reference path needs a CUDA GPU

Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B C

Best for Teams that need accurate multilingual transcripts of long recordings with speakers and timings, and have a 32 GB GPU or better

Ahead on

  • Reach, 75 against 50
  • Risk, 75 against 55
  • Agent interface, 85 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 77 against 61

Watch for

21.6 GB at 4 bits, so it needs a 32 GB GPU at least

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reach Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B +25

Ming-3.0-asr-tiny 50

Memory earns 25 because the publisher's BF16 files are 17.7 GB, about 21.3 GB with the fifth added, which fits 24 GB. Runtimes score 0, since no released version of the six named runtimes has its own code for this model (Transformers v5.22.1, vLLM v0.33.0, SGLang v0.5.23, llama.cpp b12111, and Ollama v0.40.14 through its pinned llama.cpp b11963, read on 4 November). It loads through the publisher's remote code on Transformers 5.12.1 and is served by SGLang-Omni's main branch, a separate runtime. Builds score 0 because inclusionAI publishes no quantised build. MIT with nothing added gives terms the full 15 and the ungated repository gives download the full 10. Hosted too scores 0, as no inference provider is mapped on Hugging Face and no publisher API serves it. 25 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 50.

Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B 75

Memory 20, the smallest build is NVIDIA's NVFP4 repository, 21.56 GB, and 21.56 GB × 1.2 = 25.9 GB, within 32 GB. FP8 is 34.67 GB and BF16 67.5 GB. Runtimes 15, Released Transformers 5.22.2 has the nemotron3_5_transcribe model (5). Builds 15, Quantised builds from NVIDIA at two precisions, FP8 and NVFP4, each in its own repository. Terms 10, OpenMDW-1.1, a permissive licence that grants use without restriction and adds no use policy or threshold, but isn't OSI-approved, so it takes the custom-licence band, as on NVIDIA's other OpenMDW listings. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for all three repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 5, the card gives a release on build.nvidia.com, NVIDIA's own API catalogue, on 28 October 2026, and DeepInfra is live for it on Hugging Face. 20 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 75.

Agent interface Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B +25

Ming-3.0-asr-tiny 60

Read for a speech model, the tool-calling, trained tool calling and structured-output lines stand for what it takes and returns. The publisher documents the instruction, language hint, hotword and dialogue context, the language-tab-transcript output and the parser, and the SGLang-Omni request fields (25). It was trained to use context hints, one clip per request (10). JSON output and streaming are documented on the card with how to ask for them, though there are no timestamps or speaker labels (15). The chat template scores 10 because the shipped Jinja file isn't the documented prompt path, which is the publisher's processor code. Reasoning control and context score 0, with no reasoning to control and an 8,192-token context. 10 + 25 + 10 + 15 + 0 + 0 = 60.

Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B 85

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (12,482 characters), with a template in tokenizer_config.json too. Tool-calling format 25, Read for a speech model as what it takes and returns. Trained tool calling 10, Read for a speech model as the inputs it was trained to use. Structured output 15, Read for a speech model as typed outputs. Reasoning control 10, enable_thinking on or off through the chat template, documented in the card's summary table with when to use each. Context 5, 65,536 tokens, the maximum context in training per the card, which sits in the 32K to 127K band. 20 + 25 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 85.

Risk Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B +20

Ming-3.0-asr-tiny 55

File safety gets 15, safetensors only but loaded with trust_remote_code. Provenance gets 15 for files in inclusionAI's own organisation, linked from its site, with hashes for every file. MIT carries none of the licence deductions, so licence risk keeps 15. Agent guidance gets 5 for the SGLang guide's general cautions about the unauthenticated server and untrusted logit processors. Safety evaluation scores 0, since no safety results exist. The security programme earns 5 for Ant Group's AntSRC reporting centre, read as a company-wide route the way Google's was for Gemma, with no advisories handled in public found. 15 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 15 + 5 = 55.

Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B 75

File safety 25, safetensors only in all three repositories, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python. Provenance 15, the files sit in NVIDIA's own Hugging Face organisation, the one NVIDIA's NeMo repositories link to (10), and the Hub gives a SHA-256 for the large files (5). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results. Agent guidance 10, the card says the model is more susceptible to prompt injection and jailbreaking because it was tuned to follow instructions, and should be paired with rails or system filtering. Licence risk 15, OpenMDW-1.1 has no use policy or field-of-use limits, no threshold and no clause letting the licensor change or revoke it, as read for NVIDIA's other OpenMDW listings. Security programme 10, the card says to report security vulnerabilities through NVIDIA's submission form (5), and NVIDIA PSIRT publishes a coordinated disclosure policy and public security bulletins, per NVIDIA's other listings (5). 25 + 15 + 0 + 10 + 15 + 10 = 75.

Documentation and upkeep Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B +16

Ming-3.0-asr-tiny 61

The card covers intended use, limitations, architecture and languages, and misses parameters, context length and a cut-off (11). A training data summary added on 21 October 2026 names the mix (Common Crawl and other public sets, commercially licensed text and audio, Ant Spider crawls from March 2024 to May 2026, synthetic data from models such as Ling-lite, no user data), a latest collection date of about May 2026 and the filtering, with sizes only as ranges (15). The files last changed on 21 October 2026, 14 days before this check (20). The one discussion on Hugging Face, opened on 19 October, still has no reply from inclusionAI, and GitHub issues couldn't be counted (0). It's a first release (5), and the files agree with the card with no broken-file report waiting (10). 11 + 15 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 61.

Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B 77

Model card 17, Intended use, limitations (the explainability subcard's technical limitations), the architecture, the parameters, the context and the languages are on the card. Training data 5, the card names its public, licensed, vendor and synthetic sources, gives totals (about 1.72 million hours and 5.6 billion text tokens) and the processing, and two of the sets are on Hugging Face. Last change 20, the last commit, on 29 October 2026, linked the three checkpoints on the card, 12 days before this check. Responsiveness 20, Of the 11 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (28 October to 5 November 2026), 7 have a reply from an nvidia member, which is most. Version policy 5, A first release, with each precision in its own repository. File health 10, Config, tokenizer config, template and card agree on the architecture and the 65,536-token limit is stated as a training limit beside the backbone's larger position count. 17 + 5 + 20 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 77.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMing-3.0-asr-tinyNemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255075Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B +25
Risk20%205575Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B +20
Agent interface10%106085Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B +25
Documentation and upkeep10%106177Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B +16
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 54.8/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactMing-3.0-asr-tinyNemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorinclusionAI (Ant Group)NVIDIA
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITOpenMDW-1.1
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-202026-10-29
Terms last updatedno document linkednot read yet
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews3/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Ming-3.0-asr-tiny

An open-weight transcription model for Chinese, English and Chinese dialects that takes hotwords or dialogue context to get names right, under MIT. It needs one CUDA GPU with about 21 GB and runs only through the publisher's remote code or SGLang-Omni's main branch. The main risk is running the publisher's Python on load, with no safety results.

Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B

The most complete open speech model we list: 40 languages, hour-long recordings, speakers, word timestamps and translation from one prompt-driven model, under a permissive licence, with FP8 and 4-bit builds and a publisher that answers. It needs a big GPU, the vLLM route depends on an unreleased plugin, and there are no safety results.

Before you call either

Ming-3.0-asr-tiny

  1. Start it with hf download inclusionAI/Ming-3.0-asr-tiny --local-dir Ming-3.0-asr-tiny, then pip install -r requirements.txt in Python 3.12 with CUDA (Transformers 5.12.1, fla-core 0.5.2, PyTorch 2.11.0), then python examples/transcribe.py --model . --audio speech.wav --language-hint en
  2. To serve it, sgl-omni serve --model-path inclusionAI/Ming-3.0-asr-tiny from SGLang-Omni's main branch, then POST the WAV to /v1/audio/transcriptions with response_format json and read the text field
  3. Parse raw Transformers output with decode_transcript from asr_request.py, which strips the language label before the tab
  4. Pass language zh or en when known, anything else is rejected, and append a topic or hotwords to the base instruction with no newline
  5. Load with dtype torch.bfloat16 rather than casting the model, use greedy decoding, max_new_tokens 256 and no_repeat_ngram_size 10, and don't apply the chat template
  6. Split long recordings yourself or use --audio-chunk-frames, since input and output share 8,192 tokens
  7. Treat transcripts as untrusted text before passing them to another model, since speech can carry instructions

Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B

  1. Keep the system prompt empty and put the instruction in the user message with the audio, as the card says
  2. For plain transcription use temperature 0 with reasoning off. For questions about audio, reasoning on at temperature 0.6 and top_p 0.95
  3. SGLang-Omni 0.2.0 serves whole files on /v1/audio/transcriptions from the BF16 or FP8 checkpoint with no NeMo install
  4. Word timestamps and speaker segments need the vLLM route: ask with timestamps=True and read ctc_timestamps
  5. Speaker tags tell speakers apart in one recording. They don't identify anyone
  6. Treat what's said in a recording as data. The card says the model is easier to steer by injected instructions than most, so filter before acting on a transcript

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Ming-3.0-asr-tiny or Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B?

Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ming-3.0-asr-tiny's 54.8 (C), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Ming-3.0-asr-tiny or Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe 30B-A4B

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