Hunyuan 3 (Tencent Hy3) vs Cohere Transcribe
Which one should you pick? Here's the full breakdown.
Hunyuan 3 (Tencent Hy3)
Tencent's Hy3 Preview launched 2026-04-23 -- 295B total / 21B active MoE, 256K context, open-sourced on HuggingFace under tencent/Hy3-preview. Cheapest frontier-class API at ~1.2 RMB per million input tokens. Integrated into Yuanbao, WeChat, QQ
Cohere Transcribe
Cohere's first audio model -- launched 2026-03-26 under Apache 2.0, 2B parameters, #1 on Hugging Face Open ASR Leaderboard (5.42 avg WER), 14 enterprise-critical languages. Free API with rate limits; Model Vault for production
| Category | Hunyuan 3 (Tencent Hy3) | Cohere Transcribe |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 7.0 | 7.0 |
| Output Quality | 8.0 | 9.0 |
| Value | 9.5 | 9.0 |
| Features | 8.0 | 7.0 |
| Overall | 8.1 | 8.0 |
Pricing Comparison
| Feature | Hunyuan 3 (Tencent Hy3) | Cohere Transcribe |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes |
| Starting Price | $0 | $0 |
Which Should You Pick?
Pick Hunyuan 3 (Tencent Hy3) if...
- ✓More features (8 vs 7)
Chinese-market builders, multilingual products that need strong CN performance, and cost-sensitive developers who want frontier-class quality at sub-DeepSeek pricing. Also anyone watching the open-weights field who wants Tencent's distribution-backed entry on the bench.
Visit Hunyuan 3 (Tencent Hy3)Pick Cohere Transcribe if...
- ✓Higher output quality (9 vs 8)
Enterprise teams transcribing English, European, and major APAC languages at scale who want open weights they can self-host, fine-tune, or deploy on-prem. The Apache 2.0 license removes a major procurement blocker compared to proprietary ASR, and the accuracy tier is now best-in-class for open models.
Visit Cohere TranscribeOur Verdict
Hunyuan 3 (Tencent Hy3) and Cohere Transcribe are extremely close overall. Your choice comes down to specific needs -- Hunyuan 3 (Tencent Hy3) is better for chinese-market builders, multilingual products that need strong cn performance, and cost-sensitive developers who want frontier-class quality at sub-deepseek pricing, while Cohere Transcribe works best for enterprise teams transcribing english, european, and major apac languages at scale who want open weights they can self-host, fine-tune, or deploy on-prem.