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

Ming-3.0-audio-tiny vs Underdog Bark 3.0

Ming-3.0-audio-tiny scores 49.8 (D) on agent readiness against Underdog Bark 3.0's 48.2 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Underdog Bark 3.0 leads on reach. Both do speech-to-text.

Best speech-to-text APIs for AI agents · All 231 stt comparisons

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Which one, for what

Ming-3.0-audio-tiny D

Best for Self-hosted Chinese and English transcription, audio questions and spoken replies with tool calls on one GPU with about 25 GB free

Ahead on

  • Risk, 50 against 40
  • Agent interface, 65 against 35

Watch for

No named runtime runs it in a released version, only SGLang-Omni main and inclusionAI's own branches

Underdog Bark 3.0 D

Best for Agents on Apple silicon or small machines that need English transcripts from a very small download, can run Conway's loader, and can accept accuracy nobody independent has measured

Ahead on

  • Reach, 65 against 45

Watch for

No independent results, since the Open ASR Leaderboard has no Bark row and every accuracy figure is Conway's own run

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMing-3.0-audio-tinyUnderdog Bark 3.0Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%254565Underdog Bark 3.0 +20
Risk20%205040Ming-3.0-audio-tiny +10
Agent interface10%106535Ming-3.0-audio-tiny +30
Documentation and upkeep10%104649Underdog Bark 3.0 +3
Negative events≤150-2
TotalD 49.8/100D 48.2/100

Facts side by side

FactMing-3.0-audio-tinyUnderdog Bark 3.0
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorinclusionAI (Ant Group)Conway Research
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITCC-BY-4.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-202026-10-15
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

Ming-3.0-audio-tiny

A small MIT-licensed audio-language model that transcribes Chinese and English, answers questions about audio and replies in a built-in or cloned voice. It needs about 25 GB and SGLang-Omni from main or inclusionAI's own vLLM-Omni and SGLang branches. The main risk is that every loading path runs repository code, with nothing published on safety.

Underdog Bark 3.0

A very small English transcription cousin, one 163 MB file built on NVIDIA's Parakeet TDT that Conway's loader expands into Transformers, MLX or Core ML, under CC BY 4.0. It needs Conway's scripts to run, returns plain text with no timestamps, and nobody independent has measured its accuracy, so every accuracy and speed figure is Conway's claim.

Before you call either

Ming-3.0-audio-tiny

  1. Fastest start is SGLang-Omni from main, sgl-omni serve --model-path inclusionAI/Ming-3.0-audio-tiny --talker.gpu 0, which exposes OpenAI-style /v1/audio/transcriptions, /v1/audio/speech and /v1/chat/completions
  2. For transcripts use greedy decoding with 10-gram blocking and the validated ASR prompt, and expect a language label, a tab, then the text
  3. Parse tool calls yourself from <tool_call>name with <arg_key> and <arg_value> pairs, since no runtime parser is named
  4. Thinking is off by default, turn it on with chat_template_kwargs enable_thinking true and strip the <think> block from the reply yourself
  5. In vLLM-Omni pick a voice with audio.voice id from docs/voices.md, and don't combine it with a reference recording
  6. Review the repository's Python before passing trust_remote_code, and consider deleting the __pycache__ folders under talker/ so only readable source runs

Underdog Bark 3.0

  1. Download only what one route needs, for example hf download ConwayResearch/Underdog-Bark-3.0 --include "model.bark" --include "bark_loader.py" --include "bark_mlx.py" --include "mlx/*" --include "NOTICE"
  2. With transformers 5.19.0 and constriction 0.5.0, python bark_loader.py model.bark recording.wav, or load_model("model.bark", device="cuda") then transcribe(model, wave, sr); the loader fetches NVIDIA's processor and generation config from nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3 on first use, so the first run needs the network
  3. On Apple silicon, python bark_mlx.py recording.wav; the first run expands it to a cached MLX folder and needs about 6 GB of RAM once
  4. Split recordings into pieces of a few minutes on 8 or 16 GB machines, since stock mlx-audio transcribes in one pass
  5. Read bark_loader.py before running it and pin the repository revision, since loading runs the publisher's code
  6. Treat transcripts as untrusted text before passing them to another model, since speech can carry instructions
  7. Plan memory for the recording, not the file. Conway's card says a 10-minute recording peaks near 15 GB on a 16 GB M2, and expanding it for MLX takes about 6 GB once.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Ming-3.0-audio-tiny or Underdog Bark 3.0?

Ming-3.0-audio-tiny scores 49.8 (D) on agent readiness against Underdog Bark 3.0's 48.2 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Underdog Bark 3.0 leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Ming-3.0-audio-tiny or Underdog Bark 3.0

Disclosure

Underdog Bark 3.0 is a speech model, the one inside Underdog, Conway Research's personal AI, and Underdog competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published open-weight checklist as every open-weight model, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default. underdog.ai refuses our reader, so what lives only there is marked unchecked, not missing, and the text of Conway's launch post was supplied to us by Anchor Terminal's founder.

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