Cobra Voice Activity Detection

Detect human voice activity in real time.

Production-ready voice activity detection, doubling the accuracy of webRTC VAD with deep learning

Probability of Voice
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What is Cobra Voice Activity Detection?

Cobra Voice Activity Detection (VAD) is software that scans audio streams to identify the presence of human speech in real time.

Production-ready Cobra Voice Activity Detection enables adding highly accurate voice detection to any platform in minutes.

Cross-platform Voice Activity Detection with a few lines of code

c = pvcobra.create(access_key)
while True:
is_voiced =
c.process(audio_frame())

Why Cobra Voice Activity Detection?

Cobra Voice Activity Detection is powered by deep learning, whereas alternatives, including 11-year-old webRTC VAD, use classic signal processing.

Production-ready Cobra Voice Activity Detection offers what developers need: Twice the webRTC VAD accuracy, ease of use, cross-platform native SDKs, and enterprise support.

Voice Activity Detection that simply works anywhere

Production-ready, responsive, accurate, and noise-resilient voice activity detection, enabling enterprises to focus on building core features

Other VAD Engines

  • 🧳
    Hand-tuned algorithms
  • 🧑‍🔬
    Built for experimentation
  • 🆘
    Community-driven Support

Cobra VAD

  • 🧠
    Powered by deep learning
  • 👨‍💻
    Production-ready
  • 📦
    Enterprise support
Powered by deep learning

Double the accuracy

Choose high-performance for your product. Cobra Voice Activity Detection, powered by deep learning, outperforms traditional signal processing. It doubles the accuracy of Google’s well-known WebRTC VAD - proven by the open-source benchmark.

Developer-first, enterprise-ready

Ready with a few lines of code

Build in minutes with confidence. Production-ready Cobra Voice Activity Detection is ideal for enterprise applications. Developers can deploy with it a few lines of code without worrying about support when they need it.

Cross-platform support

Scale with no limit

Add voice activity detection to your existing platforms and expand later without worrying. Cobra Voice Activity Detection runs on-device, mobile, and desktop, within web browsers, on-premise, and public cloud.

Get started with

Cobra Voice Activity Detection

Embed Cobra Voice Activity Detection into your product in less than 10 minutes.

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Forever Free Plan
  • Production-ready model
  • Intuitive SDK
  • GitHub Issues support
Learn more about

Cobra Voice Activity Detection

What is Voice Activity Detection?

Voice activity detection (VAD) is a technology used to detect the presence of human speech within an audio signal. That is why it is also known as speech activity detection, speech detection, or voice detection. VAD is essential to enable Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR).

What is the best Voice Activity Detector?

Enterprises may have different expectations from Voice Activity Detectors. Cobra Voice Activity Detection is the best Voice Activity Detector for those looking for accurate, cross-platform, resource-efficient, ready-to-deploy, and freely available to start building with it. We initially developed Cobra Voice Activity Detection as an internal tool. Then, we made it publicly available since there was no computationally efficient and accurate voice activity detection in the market.

How do you detect voice activity?

The typical voice activity detection algorithms, including the most popular WebRTC VAD, use learned statistical models such as the Gaussian mixture model. It’s an old technique. That’s why WebRTC VAD is good, computationally efficient, and works for streaming audio signals but not great. Cobra Voice Activity Detection uses deep learning, achieving the highest accuracy across all platforms.

Graphic to show voice activity detection works. Voice input shown like a heartbeat and the engine covers the area as it detects the voice activity.

Does Cobra Voice Activity Detection carry any security flaws and leak data?

Cobra Voice Activity Detection processes real-time conversations or recordings on-device, resulting in private, HIPAA, CCPA, and GDPR-compliant experiences. Cobra Voice Activity Detection can run on web browsers, mobile applications, IoT devices, laptops, or servers wherever the data resides.

What does voice activity detection do?

Cobra Voice Activity Detection works standalone but also pairs up with other engines and enables several use cases. For example, developers combine Cobra Voice Activity Detection with Rhino Speech-to-Intent for QSR drive-thru voice assistants, with Cheetah Streaming Speech-to-Text for real-time agent coaching, and with Leopard Speech-to-Text for cost-effective audio transcription.

Which platforms does Cobra Voice Activity Detection support?

  1. Web Browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge
  2. Single Board Computers: Raspberry Pi, NVIDIA Jetson, and BeagleBone
  3. Mobile Devices: Android and iOS
  4. Desktop and Servers: Linux, macOS, and Windows

Can Cobra Voice Activity Detection run on microcontrollers?

Yes! Reach out to the Picovoice Consulting team to get Cobra Voice Activity Detection ported to your platform or a custom voice activity detector trained for you.

How do I get technical support for Cobra Voice Activity Detection?

Picovoice docs, blog, Medium posts, and GitHub are great resources to learn about voice AI, Picovoice technology, and how to detect voice activity. You can report bugs and issues on GitHub. If you need help with developing your product, you can purchase the optional Support Add-on or upgrade your account to the Developer Plan.

How can I get informed about updates and upgrades?

Version changes appear in the and LinkedIn. Subscribing to GitHub is the best way to get notified of patch releases. If you enjoy building with Cobra Voice Activity Detection, show it by giving a GitHub star!