paper-qa

by Future-House

RAG over PDFs / transcripts — downstream ASR consumer pattern.

Looking at paper-qa? Try this first.

Drop your audio. Transcript in seconds. First transcript free, then $4 = 300 min

TL;DR

Best for pipelines that ingest Whisper transcripts into research-grade QA. Pricing: free.

Category
Open source
License
Apache-2.0
Stars
★ 9.0k
Last push
2026-07-30
Pricing
free
Platforms
Linux, macOS

What it is

A reference RAG pipeline over PDF + transcript corpora. Apache-2.0.

Best for: Pipelines that ingest Whisper transcripts into research-grade QA.
Watch out for: Not an ASR engine.

Install / use

pip install paper-qa

Features

Speaker diarizationNo
Word-level timestampsYes
Streaming / real-timeNo
Languages supported99
HIPAA eligibleNo

Links

GitHub repo ↗

paper-qa vs Whipscribe

Featurepaper-qaWhipscribe
CategoryOpen sourceTranscription APIs
Pricingfree$4–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · $2 single unlock · 60 min free on signup
Speaker diarizationNoYes
Word timestampsYesYes
StreamingNoNo
Languages9999
PlatformsLinux, macOSWeb, API, MCP

Alternatives to paper-qa

Whipscribe is a managed faster-whisper + whisperX service. If you want transcripts without running infrastructure, paste a URL or drop a file in the form below — you'll have a transcript in seconds.