German speech dataset, roughly 500 hours ready to license
Our OTS German speech dataset is roughly 500 hours of German speech, prompts and conversations, already recorded by German speakers in our 30,000+ network, with consent from every speaker for commercial AI training. License it now and train your German speech recognition model without waiting on a new collection.
- ~500 h of German in stock
- ~35,000 h across the OTS pool
- 100% of speakers consented
- ISO 27001 certified
- SOC 2 report under NDA
- GDPR DPAs and HIPAA BAAs on request
What's in the German speech dataset?
The IndecalAI OTS German speech dataset is roughly 500 hours of German speech, prompts and conversations, recorded by German speakers in our network who all consented to commercial AI training. It's already recorded, so you can license it now instead of waiting on a new collection.
German is the largest native language in the European Union and a big market for in-car voice, assistants and customer service automation. Its compounds and regional accents are why German speech data has to come from real German speakers.
Every recording comes with a transcript and metadata about the speaker, the device and the setting, and you can take it as WAV, OGG or another common format. Every order starts with sample clips and a spec sheet, so you can match the data against your model before you agree a licence.
Need more than what's in stock? German speakers from our 30,000+ network record new speech to your brief, and our German data page covers what we collect to order.
German speech dataset at a glance
- Hours
- Roughly 500 hours, already recorded
- Language
- German (Deutsch), de
- Content
- Speech, prompts and conversations
- Consent
- Every speaker consented to commercial AI training
- Speakers
- German speakers from our 30,000+ network
- Audio and transcripts
- Transcripts and metadata with every recording, in WAV, OGG and more
- Licence
- Terms agreed with each customer, in writing
- Price
- Quoted per order
- Samples
- German sample clips sent in reply to your request
- Security
- ISO 27001 certified. SOC 2 report available under NDA. GDPR DPAs and HIPAA BAAs on request.
What comes with every German recording
Recorded on the devices and in the places your users actually speak, and delivered in the format your pipeline expects.
| Detail | In the German dataset |
|---|---|
| Speech types | A mix of scripted prompts and natural conversations |
| Recording devices | Mobile phones, laptops and studio microphones |
| Environments | Quiet rooms and noisy, everyday settings |
| Transcripts | Included with every recording |
| Speaker metadata | Speaker details, such as gender and age, for each recording |
| Recording metadata | The device and the setting for each recording |
| Audio formats | WAV, OGG and other common formats |
| Sample rates | Listed for each recording on the spec sheet |
What roughly 500 hours of German speech looks like
Put end to end, 500 hours of German speech would play for about three weeks, day and night. Nobody listens to all of that before buying, so every order starts with sample clips and a spec sheet instead.
- ~500 hours of German speech
- ~30,000 minutes
- ~1.8M seconds of audio
- ~21 days, played back to back
Hours here are recorded audio. When you compare quotes, check whether each one counts audio hours or only the parts where someone is talking.
German at a glance, for speech teams
The facts that shape a German speech project, from who speaks it to how it's written. Our German data page covers what we collect to order.
Speakers
~133 million
people speak Standard German as a first or second language, about 76 million of them natively (Ethnologue, 2026).
Where it's spoken
Germany, Austria, Switzerland
Official in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, and in parts of Belgium and Italy.
Script
Latin alphabet
Written left to right, with ä, ö, ü and ß, and every noun capitalized.
Family
Germanic
A West Germanic language, close to Dutch and related to English.
Varieties
Standard and dialects
Standard German sits alongside strong regional speech, and Swiss German differs so much that it's often treated separately.
Codes
de · deu
ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-3 codes. Locales speech APIs often use: de-DE, de-AT, de-CH.
German speech dataset, voice dataset or speech corpus?
The same German data goes by several names, depending on who's asking. Here's what each name usually means.
German speech dataset
The general term
Recorded German speech with details about each recording, for training and testing speech models. The name this page uses.
German voice dataset
Usually the same thing
Some teams mean voice for text-to-speech or speaker recognition, which needs cleaner audio. Part of our data was recorded in a studio, so ask for those recordings.
German audio dataset
A wider term
It can include music or background sound. Ours is speech audio: German speech, prompts and conversations.
German speech corpus
The research name
A structured collection of recordings and their details. Commercial datasets are corpora too, licensed instead of published.
German ASR or speech-to-text dataset
Speech plus what was said
For training a model that turns German audio into text. Every recording in our German dataset comes with a transcript.
Swiss and Austrian German speech data
Regional German
Speech from Austria and Switzerland sounds quite different from Germany. Ask which regions are in the hours you license.
What makes German hard for speech recognition
Four things that catch out German speech models, and what to listen for when you check a sample from anyone, us included.
English words inside German sentences
German speakers use many English words at work and online, often with German endings, like downgeloadet. A model trained only on formal German stumbles on that, so listen for it in a sample.
Long compound words
German joins words into long compounds, so one written word can hold a whole phrase. Transcripts have to join or split compounds the standard way, or the model learns the wrong words.
Accents across the German-speaking world
German from the north, Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland carries very different sounds and words. Check that the speaker mix covers the regions your users come from.
Dialect inside standard speech
Many speakers mix regional sounds and words into standard German, and Swiss speakers often speak Swiss German. Decide whether transcripts follow the speech or standard German spelling.
What teams build with a German speech dataset
Where ready-recorded German speech tends to go. These are kinds of work, not client names.
German speech recognition
Train or fine-tune a German speech-to-text model, or adapt a multilingual model so it handles German well.
Voice bots and IVR
Teach a voice bot how German callers actually ask for things, in the words and accents they use.
Customer service calls
German speech for models that route, transcribe or summarize customer calls about accounts, orders and claims.
Voice in the car and at home
A German base for in-car assistants and smart devices, before recording commands in the real setting.
Support and speech analytics
German conversations for models that find intent, sentiment or topics in support calls and chats.
Testing a German model
Held-back German recordings your model never trained on, to measure word and character error rate before launch.
How many hours of German speech do you need?
It depends on the model you start from and how close your users sound to the training data. These are rough starting points that come up often in speech work. Your own tests should decide.
| Goal | Rough starting point | With our German data |
|---|---|---|
| Test a model you already have | A few hours your model never trained on | A test set cut from stock and kept out of training |
| Fine-tune a multilingual model, such as Whisper or wav2vec 2.0 | Tens to a few hundred hours | Roughly 500 hours in stock covers it |
| Adapt to one domain, like banking calls | A smaller set that sounds like your users | Stock as a base, plus a custom top-up in your domain |
| Train a German model from scratch | Thousands of hours | Stock as a base, plus a larger custom collection |
Free German speech datasets or a licensed one?
Public corpora such as Mozilla Common Voice, Multilingual LibriSpeech and FLEURS have done a lot for German speech research. They cover what their creators chose to record, like read sentences, crowd recordings or broadcast speech, and each comes with its own licence and terms of use. Here's how they compare with a licensed dataset.
| Topic | Public German corpora | Our German speech dataset |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Set by each corpus, and some limit redistribution or changes | Agreed with you in writing, for what you're building |
| Consent | Covered by each project's own terms | Every speaker consented to commercial AI training |
| What it sounds like | Whatever the project recorded | Speech, prompts and conversations, with sample clips first |
| Who else trains on it | Anyone who downloads it | Set in the licence we agree with you |
| Filling gaps | Up to you | Recorded to your brief by the same network |
| Support | Community forums | A named contact from sample to delivery |
How to check a German speech sample
Thirty minutes with the sample clips and the spec sheet tells you most of what you need. Use the same list on any vendor.
| Check | What to look for | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Accents | Speakers from the regions your users come from | The speaker mix on the spec sheet, and the clips |
| Everyday speech | The way your users really talk, including any mixing with other languages | Listen to the clips |
| Script | Transcripts in the script and spelling your model should output | The transcript format on the spec sheet |
| Audio | A sample rate and recording setup close to your product | The sample rate on the spec sheet |
| Numbers | Amounts, dates and phone numbers written one consistent way | Transcripts of the clips |
| Rights | Consent that covers commercial AI training, and a licence that fits | Ask for the licence terms before you buy |
From German sample clips to licensed data
Your named contact runs it from the first question to delivery.
-
01
Ask
Tell us how many German hours you need and what the model is for.
You get A reply within one business day
-
02
Sample and spec sheet
We send German sample clips and the spec sheet in reply.
You get German clips and the spec sheet
-
03
Licence and quote
We agree the licence terms and send a quote for the order.
You get Written licence terms and a quote
-
04
Delivery
The licensed German speech is delivered to you.
You get Licensed German speech with transcripts
-
05
Fill the gaps
Accents, devices or domains that are missing get recorded to your brief.
You get New German speech, recorded to your brief
Get German sample clips Start with the sample clips, then decide.
German speech data terms
The words that come up when you buy or build German speech data. The full glossary covers every data type.
- Compound noun
- A noun made by joining two or more words, such as Kontonummer, account number. German writes compounds as one word.
- Umlaut
- The two dots over ä, ö and ü, which change the vowel sound. Typed text sometimes writes them as ae, oe and ue.
- Swiss German
- The German dialects spoken in Switzerland, used day to day and very different from standard German.
- Speaker metadata
- Details recorded about each speaker, such as gender and age, that let you check the speaker mix against your users.
- OTS dataset
- Short for off-the-shelf dataset: data already collected and ready to license before a buyer asks for it, instead of recorded to one buyer's brief.
- Word error rate (WER)
- The share of words a speech model gets wrong against a reference transcript. Lower is better.
- Character error rate (CER)
- The same idea counted in characters, often used alongside WER, since small spelling differences can make WER look worse than the model is.
- Utterance
- One stretch of speech by one speaker, such as a single prompt read aloud or one turn in a conversation.
More German and speech data
Every language in stock is on the off-the-shelf speech datasets page. Related speech datasets: Dutch, English, Danish and Swedish.
OTS speech datasets
Around 35,000 hours across languages, ready to license.
German data to your brief
German speech, text and translation, collected to order.
Transcription
German audio turned into timed text, checked by people.
Languages
100 languages, collected to order.
Data and model evaluation
Held-back German speech scored against your targets.
Questions about the German speech dataset
Straight answers about licensing German speech. The off-the-shelf FAQ covers questions that apply to every language.
Do you have a German speech dataset ready to license?
Yes. Roughly 500 hours of German speech, prompts and conversations are already recorded and ready to license, as part of our off-the-shelf speech pool.
What's in the German speech dataset?
A mix of scripted prompts and natural conversations in German, recorded on mobile phones, laptops and studio microphones, in quiet and noisy settings. Every recording comes with a transcript and metadata about the speaker, the device and the setting, in WAV, OGG or another common format.
Does it include Austrian or Swiss German?
The speaker mix is listed on the spec sheet. Ask which regions are in the hours you'd license, and the sample clips let you hear the accents before you commit.
Did every speaker consent to AI training?
Yes. Every speaker gave consent for their recordings to be used for commercial AI training.
How is the German dataset licensed?
Licence terms are agreed with each customer, in writing, before delivery. That includes how you can use the data and whether anyone else can license the same recordings.
How much does the German speech dataset cost?
We quote each order on its own, based on the hours you need and the licence terms. Send your request and your named contact comes back with a quote.
Can we hear German samples first?
Yes. Ask and we send German sample clips with the spec sheet, so you can check the audio before you commit.
What if we need more than 500 hours, or a specific accent?
We collect it. German speakers from our network record new speech to your brief, such as a region, an age group, a device or a domain, and it can sit alongside the hours you license from stock.
Is this the same as a German voice dataset or speech corpus?
For most uses, yes. Speech dataset, voice dataset, audio dataset and speech corpus are names for the same thing: recorded German speech with details about each recording. If you need studio-quality voice for text-to-speech, ask for the recordings made in a studio.
Can we use it as a German speech-to-text (ASR) dataset?
Yes. Every recording comes with a transcript, so it's ready for training and testing German speech-to-text models. The spec sheet shows the transcript style, so you can check it matches your pipeline before you license it.
Why not use a free German speech dataset?
Public German corpora are a good start for research. Each one has its own licence and terms of use, and they cover what their creators chose to record, such as read sentences or broadcast speech. Read the licence before you train a commercial model on one, and check that it sounds like your users.
What does OTS mean?
OTS stands for off-the-shelf: data that's already recorded and ready to license, instead of collected after you order. Our OTS German speech dataset is roughly 500 hours.
How many hours of German speech do we need?
It depends on your starting model. A test set can be a few hours, fine-tuning a multilingual model often starts at tens to a few hundred hours, and training from scratch takes thousands. Your own tests should decide.
Can we fine-tune Whisper or wav2vec 2.0 on it?
Yes. Teams commonly fine-tune open speech models like these on licensed German speech, and every recording comes with a transcript in WAV, OGG or another common format. The spec sheet shows the transcript style, so you can plan any conversion before you train.
Do you work with US teams?
Yes. We take calls in US Eastern mornings, which is evening in India. We're ISO 27001 certified, our SOC 2 report is available under NDA, and we sign GDPR data processing agreements and HIPAA business associate agreements on request.
Get German sample clips
Say roughly how many German hours you need and what the model is for. We'll send sample clips and the spec sheet.
- Your named contact replies within one business day.
- We send German sample clips and the spec sheet.
- We agree the licence terms and send a quote.
This opens your email app with the request filled in. Nothing is sent until you press send. You can also use the contact page.