South Asia · India
Tamil conversational speech dataset
500 hours of spontaneous Tamil 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 | Tamil |
|---|---|
| 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 | $75 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 Tamil 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 Tamil. Read more in our guide to conversational vs. scripted speech data.
Free samples
Audit the Tamil 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 Tamil 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 Tamil; 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 Tamil. | CC0 (dataset card text); Hugging Face metadata lists CC BY 4.0; AI4Bharat notes it does not own the IndicCorp source text | Allowed |
| IARPA Babel Tamil Language Pack (LDC2017S13) (opens in a new tab)Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) | About 350 hours of Tamil conversational and scripted telephone speech from Tamil Nadu, collected 2012 to 2013, supplied as 8 kHz and 48 kHz audio. | LDC IARPA Babel Tamil Agreement (For-Profit, Non-Member or Not-For-Profit); fee applies | Paid license |
| Crowdsourced high-quality Tamil multi-speaker speech data set (SLR65) (opens in a new tab)Google (via OpenSLR) | Tamil sentences read by native-speaker volunteers, released by Google for building speech synthesis systems. | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Allowed |
Babel Tamil has telephone conversations but needs a paid LDC license, and the others are read or mostly extempore; ours is 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 Tamil 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 Tamil hard for speech recognition?
Spoken Tamil is very different from written Tamil, so a model trained on formal text or read speech struggles with real conversation. Tamil also has the "ழ" (zh) sound and other retroflexes, long words built from suffixes, and heavy English mixing in casual talk.
Is there free Tamil speech data?
Yes, IndicVoices, Kathbath and OpenSLR's Tamil speech set are free for commercial use. The IARPA Babel Tamil Language Pack needs a paid license. 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 Tamil 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 Tamil speech dataset cost?
Pricing is $75 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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