South Asia · India
Malayalam conversational speech dataset
500 hours of spontaneous Malayalam conversations recorded in India across 50 vetted native speakers. Dual-channel audio with time-aligned transcripts, speaker metadata (age, gender, region, device), and full chain-of-consent documentation. Licensed for commercial ASR, TTS, and voice AI training.
Dataset specifications
| Language | Malayalam |
|---|---|
| Recorded in | India |
| Speech type | Spontaneous two-person conversations |
| Volume | 500 hours |
| Speakers | 50 vetted native speakers |
| Audio | Dual-channel (one channel per speaker) |
| Transcripts | Time-aligned, human-verified |
| Metadata | Age, gender, region, recording device |
| License | Commercial (training & evaluation) |
| Price | $65 per hour of audio |
Need more hours, another dialect or your own recording setup? We collect speech data to spec.
Built for
Training and evaluating speech models that must handle real Malayalam speech:
- Automatic speech recognition (ASR / STT)
- Text-to-speech & voice synthesis prosody
- Voice agents and IVR for India
- Speaker diarization & turn-taking models
- Speech LLM / audio-understanding fine-tuning
Why conversational data?
Models trained on read speech consistently underperform on spontaneous audio. Disfluencies, overlap, and natural speech rates aren’t in the training distribution. This dataset closes that gap for Malayalam. Read more in our guide to conversational vs. scripted speech data.
Free samples
Audit the Malayalam data yourself
Share your company email and we’ll email you representative audio, matching transcripts, and the metadata schema. Check audio quality, transcript accuracy, and speaker diversity before you spend a dollar.
Public alternatives
Public Malayalam speech data vs. this dataset
| Source | What it is | License | Commercial training |
|---|---|---|---|
| IndicVoices (opens in a new tab)AI4Bharat | Read (8%), extempore (76%) and conversational (15%) speech from districts across India; includes Malayalam; gated download. | CC BY 4.0 | Allowed |
| Kathbath (opens in a new tab)AI4Bharat | IndicCorp sentences read aloud by contributors in Indian districts, collected on the Karya platform; includes Malayalam. | CC0 (dataset card text); Hugging Face metadata lists CC BY 4.0; AI4Bharat notes it does not own the IndicCorp source text | Allowed |
| Vaani (opens in a new tab)IISc Bangalore and ARTPARK, funded by Google | Spontaneous speech of people describing images, in many Indian languages including Malayalam; only a small share transcribed. | CC BY 4.0 | Allowed |
| Crowdsourced high-quality Malayalam multi-speaker speech data set (SLR63) (opens in a new tab)Google (via OpenSLR) | Malayalam sentences read by native-speaker volunteers, released by Google for building speech synthesis systems. | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Allowed |
The listed free Malayalam sets are read sentences, image-prompted speech or mostly extempore recordings; ours is spontaneous two-person conversation recorded in India, one channel per speaker.
Licenses as published by each source, checked October 2026. Check the current terms before use.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What does the Malayalam speech dataset include?
500 hours of spontaneous two-person conversations from 50 vetted native speakers recorded in India, delivered as dual-channel audio with time-aligned transcripts, speaker metadata (age, gender, region, device), and consent documentation.
What makes Malayalam hard for speech recognition?
Malayalam joins words together in writing, which gives it some of the longest words of any Indian language. It keeps the "ഴ" (zh) sound and a full set of retroflexes, spoken Malayalam runs fast, and mixing in English is common.
Is there free Malayalam speech data?
Yes, IndicVoices, Kathbath, Vaani and OpenSLR's Malayalam speech set are free for commercial use. This dataset is spontaneous two-person conversation recorded in India, with speaker metadata, one channel per speaker and signed commercial-use consent.
Can I use this Malayalam dataset commercially?
Yes. The dataset is licensed for commercial use, including training ASR, TTS, and other voice-AI models. Every speaker has signed explicit commercial-use consent, and we provide the full consent chain for your legal review.
How much does the Malayalam speech dataset cost?
Pricing is $65 per hour of audio. Volume discounts are available for full-dataset and multi-language purchases. Contact us for a quote.
Can I evaluate samples before buying?
Yes. Request samples with your company email, and we'll email you representative audio files and matching transcripts so your team can audit quality before committing.
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