Underdog AI releases Bark 3.0, a 163 MB open source speech recognition model it says matches NVIDIA's Parakeet and beats OpenAI's Whisper
Today we’re releasing Underdog Bark 3.0, the #1 frontier speech model It's a tiny 163 MB download as accurate as NVIDIA’s Parakeet (15x bigger). It beats OpenAI's Whisper large-v3 (57x bigger) It's fast- transcribes 1 min of audio in <0.25s on a Macbook. On recorded meetings (AMI), Bark 3.0 gets 7.82% of words wrong. Parakeet gets 9.42%. OpenAI's Whisper large-v3 gets 13.63% error rate Bark runs on both your Laptop & Phone. It’s free and open source under CC-BY 4.0 Try private on-device meeting notes & dictation, powered by Bark, in Underdog today:
Context
A small, accurate transcription model that runs on laptops and phones makes private, on device dictation and meeting notes more practical.
Underdog AI makes a private personal AI app that runs entirely on device. All accuracy and speed figures here are the company's own and have not been checked independently.
Deep dive
On the night of October 20, Underdog AI released Underdog Bark 3.0, calling it the number one frontier speech model.
It said the model is a 163 MB download, as accurate as NVIDIA's Parakeet while 15 times smaller, and better than OpenAI's Whisper large v3 while 57 times smaller. It said Bark transcribes a minute of audio in under a quarter of a second on a MacBook. On recorded meetings from the AMI benchmark, it said Bark 3.0 gets 7.82% of words wrong, against 9.42% for Parakeet and 13.63% for Whisper large v3.
The chart plots average word error rate against download size. It shows Bark 3.0 at 4.94, the same as Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3, and Whisper large v3 at 6.04. Larger Bark 3.0 Plus and Pro versions sit at 4.76 and 4.29, and the chart claims speeds up to 595 times faster than real time on an M5 Max MacBook Pro.
Underdog said Bark runs on laptops and phones and is free and open source under the CC BY 4.0 license, and it promoted its app's on device meeting notes and dictation. The post does not say which benchmarks make up the average, or whether the Plus and Pro versions are also open.
The release came the same day Mistral launched Voxtral 3, its own transcription and speech models.
What to expect next
Watch for independent tests of Bark 3.0 on standard speech benchmarks, which would confirm or challenge Underdog's error rates. Developers building dictation and meeting tools may adopt it given its size and license. Also watch for comparisons with Mistral's Voxtral 3 and newer versions of Parakeet and Whisper, and whether Underdog opens the larger Plus and Pro models. Usage of its app will show whether on device transcription draws users.