Mandarin Chinese speech dataset, roughly 500 hours ready to license
Our OTS Mandarin Chinese speech dataset is roughly 500 hours of Mandarin Chinese speech, prompts and conversations, already recorded by Mandarin Chinese speakers in our 30,000+ network, with consent from every speaker for commercial AI training. License it now and train your Mandarin Chinese speech recognition model without waiting on a new collection.
- ~500 h of Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese speech dataset?
The IndecalAI OTS Mandarin Chinese speech dataset is roughly 500 hours of Mandarin Chinese speech, prompts and conversations, recorded by Mandarin Chinese 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.
Mandarin has more native speakers than any other language, and it's a core language for any global voice product. Because it's tonal and written without spaces, it needs speech data of its own rather than an adapted English model.
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? Mandarin Chinese speakers from our 30,000+ network record new speech to your brief, and our Mandarin Chinese data page covers what we collect to order.
Mandarin Chinese speech dataset at a glance
- Hours
- Roughly 500 hours, already recorded
- Language
- Mandarin Chinese (普通话), zh
- Content
- Speech, prompts and conversations
- Consent
- Every speaker consented to commercial AI training
- Speakers
- Mandarin Chinese 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
- Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese recording
Recorded on the devices and in the places your users actually speak, and delivered in the format your pipeline expects.
| Detail | In the Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese speech looks like
Five hundred hours is easy to say and hard to picture. Played back to back, it's about 21 days of Mandarin Chinese speech without a break, far more than any team can listen to before buying. That's why every order starts with sample clips and a spec sheet.
- ~500 hours of Mandarin Chinese 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.
Mandarin Chinese at a glance, for speech teams
The facts that shape a Mandarin Chinese speech project, from who speaks it to how it's written. Our Mandarin Chinese data page covers what we collect to order.
Speakers
~1.18 billion
people speak Mandarin as a first or second language, about 988 million of them natively (Ethnologue, 2026).
Where it's spoken
China, Taiwan, Singapore
The official language of mainland China and Taiwan, one of Singapore's official languages, and widely spoken across the diaspora.
Script
汉字 Chinese characters
Simplified characters in mainland China and Singapore, traditional in Taiwan. Pinyin writes the sounds in Latin letters.
Family
Sino-Tibetan
A Sinitic language. Cantonese, Wu and Min are related but not mutually intelligible with it.
Varieties
Standard and regional
Standard Mandarin is based on Beijing speech, but people from different provinces carry strong regional accents into it.
Codes
zh · cmn
ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-3 codes. Locales speech APIs often use: zh-CN, zh-TW.
Mandarin Chinese speech dataset, voice dataset or speech corpus?
Buyers search for the same data under different names. Here's what each one usually means, and how our Mandarin Chinese data fits.
Mandarin Chinese speech dataset
The general term
Recorded Mandarin Chinese speech with details about each recording, for training and testing speech models. The name this page uses.
Mandarin Chinese 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.
Mandarin Chinese audio dataset
A wider term
It can include music or background sound. Ours is speech audio: Mandarin Chinese speech, prompts and conversations.
Mandarin Chinese speech corpus
The research name
A structured collection of recordings and their details. Commercial datasets are corpora too, licensed instead of published.
Mandarin Chinese ASR or speech-to-text dataset
Speech plus what was said
For training a model that turns Mandarin Chinese audio into text. Every recording in our Mandarin Chinese dataset comes with a transcript.
Chinese speech data
Check which Chinese
Chinese speech can mean Mandarin, Cantonese or another Chinese language. This dataset is Mandarin. Our Cantonese dataset is separate.
What makes Mandarin Chinese hard for speech recognition
Where Mandarin Chinese speech recognition usually goes wrong, and how to spot it in a sample before you buy.
English words inside Mandarin sentences
In tech, business and city speech, Mandarin speakers often drop in English words like app or OK. A model trained only on formal Mandarin stumbles on that, so listen for mixing in a sample.
Characters, not words
Chinese is written without spaces between words, and the same sound can map to many characters. Decide between simplified and traditional output, then check the transcripts match.
Accents across China
Mandarin from Beijing, Sichuan, Guangdong or Taiwan carries different sounds, and many speakers grew up with another Chinese language too. Check that the speaker mix covers your users.
Tones carry meaning
Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone, and a change in tone changes the word. Tones also shift in fast speech, so a model needs real conversational audio to learn them.
What teams build with a Mandarin Chinese speech dataset
The projects Mandarin Chinese speech data usually ends up in. They describe the work, not who it was for.
Mandarin Chinese speech recognition
Train or fine-tune a Mandarin Chinese speech-to-text model, or adapt a multilingual model so it handles Mandarin Chinese well.
Voice bots and IVR
Teach a voice bot how Mandarin Chinese callers actually ask for things, in the words and accents they use.
Customer service calls
Mandarin Chinese speech for models that route, transcribe or summarize customer calls about accounts, orders and claims.
Voice in the car and at home
A Mandarin Chinese base for in-car assistants and smart devices, before recording commands in the real setting.
Support and speech analytics
Mandarin Chinese conversations for models that find intent, sentiment or topics in support calls and chats.
Testing a Mandarin Chinese model
Held-back Mandarin Chinese recordings your model never trained on, to measure word and character error rate before launch.
How many hours of Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese model from scratch | Thousands of hours | Stock as a base, plus a larger custom collection |
Free Mandarin Chinese speech datasets or a licensed one?
Public corpora such as AISHELL-1, Mozilla Common Voice, WenetSpeech and FLEURS have done a lot for Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese corpora | Our Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese speech sample
Six things to check before you license, and where to look for each. Use it on every vendor you compare.
| 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 Mandarin Chinese sample clips to licensed data
Your named contact runs it from the first question to delivery.
-
01
Ask
Tell us how many Mandarin Chinese hours you need and what the model is for.
You get A reply within one business day
-
02
Sample and spec sheet
We send Mandarin Chinese sample clips and the spec sheet in reply.
You get Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese speech is delivered to you.
You get Licensed Mandarin Chinese speech with transcripts
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05
Fill the gaps
Accents, devices or domains that are missing get recorded to your brief.
You get New Mandarin Chinese speech, recorded to your brief
Get Mandarin Chinese sample clips Start with the sample clips, then decide.
Mandarin Chinese speech data terms
The words that come up when you buy or build Mandarin Chinese speech data. The full glossary covers every data type.
- Tone
- The pitch pattern of a syllable. In Mandarin, the same syllable with a different tone is a different word.
- Pinyin
- The standard way of writing Mandarin sounds in Latin letters, often with tone marks, such as nǐ hǎo.
- Simplified and traditional characters
- Two ways of writing Chinese. Simplified is used in mainland China and Singapore, traditional in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
- 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 instead of WER for Mandarin, which is written without spaces between words.
- Utterance
- One stretch of speech by one speaker, such as a single prompt read aloud or one turn in a conversation.
More Mandarin Chinese and speech data
Every language in stock is on the off-the-shelf speech datasets page. Related speech datasets: Cantonese, Japanese and Korean.
OTS speech datasets
Around 35,000 hours across languages, ready to license.
Mandarin Chinese data to your brief
Mandarin Chinese speech, text and translation, collected to order.
Transcription
Mandarin Chinese audio turned into timed text, checked by people.
Languages
100 languages, collected to order.
Data and model evaluation
Held-back Mandarin Chinese speech scored against your targets.
Questions about the Mandarin Chinese speech dataset
Straight answers about licensing Mandarin Chinese speech. The off-the-shelf FAQ covers questions that apply to every language.
Do you have a Mandarin Chinese speech dataset ready to license?
Yes. Roughly 500 hours of Mandarin Chinese speech, prompts and conversations are already recorded and ready to license, as part of our off-the-shelf speech pool.
What's in the Mandarin Chinese speech dataset?
A mix of scripted prompts and natural conversations in Mandarin Chinese, 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.
Is this simplified or traditional Chinese?
The spoken language is Mandarin. Ask which character set the transcripts use and whether you need simplified, traditional or pinyin output, and we'll confirm it on the spec sheet before you license.
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 Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese samples first?
Yes. Ask and we send Mandarin Chinese 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. Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese speech-to-text (ASR) dataset?
Yes. Every recording comes with a transcript, so it's ready for training and testing Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese speech dataset?
Public Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese speech dataset is roughly 500 hours.
How many hours of Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese sample clips
Say roughly how many Mandarin Chinese 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 Mandarin Chinese 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.