What does voice cost realistically?

Team of 10, 30 voice memos/day at 30 sec: ~€30/month STT. TTS optional ~€10/month. Total under €50.

Does voice work in Slack?

Slack has no native voice messages but audio file uploads. OpenClaw transcribes those.

Privacy with Whisper?

OpenAI Whisper API with enterprise DPA is GDPR-suitable for non-highly-sensitive data. Otherwise local Whisper (performant on M-series Macs).

Guide

Set up OpenClaw voice (STT/TTS)

Voice is the fastest way to dictate tasks. Full setup for multi-language voice workflows with OpenClaw.

Manuel Streit

/ May 11, 2026 / 3 min read

About this guide

OpenClaw voice setup: Whisper STT, OpenAI/ElevenLabs TTS, latency tuning, voice-memo-to-task workflow and multi-language recognition.

Choose STT provider

Three options:

Whisper API (OpenAI): cheap (~€0.006/min), 99 languages, 1–2 s latency
Deepgram: faster (streaming), better for live transcription, slightly more expensive
Local Whisper: €0/min, runs well on M-series Macs, latency 2–5 s

Recommendation to start: OpenAI Whisper API. With privacy concerns: local.

TTS optional

OpenAI TTS is cheap and good, ElevenLabs more natural (higher price). Nice for voice-message replies in WhatsApp/Telegram, but not mandatory.

Voice-memo-to-task workflow

User sends voice message via WhatsApp:

OpenClaw receives ogg/opus file
Whisper transcribes
Skill voice-to-task classifies: task, note, question?
If task: created in CRM, confirm reply back

Multi-language

Whisper auto-detects languages. German, English, Turkish, Arabic, French — all good. For dialects (Bavarian, Swiss German) we benchmark before rollout.

Tune latency

Streaming STT (Deepgram) brings first words under 500 ms. OpenAI Whisper API delivers full transcript after 1–2 s. For real-time conversation: streaming. For async voice memos: Whisper.