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Using SDKs with Self-Hosted

By default, Deepgram’s SDKs hit the hosted endpoint api.deepgram.com. To use one of our SDKs with your self-hosted deployment, you will need to specify your own self-hosted endpoint instead.

If running your requests locally on your server, your URL may be as simple as http://localhost:8080 (pre-recorded) or ws://localhost:8080 (streaming).

If running your requests on other servers, you may be using a static IP, such as http://172.23.0.1:8080.

If you use a multi-server or auto-scaled environment, you may configure a URL that is served by a load balancer that routes your requests across several instances.

Note that for a host that does not have TLS enabled, you will use http rather than https, and ws rather than wss.

To configure the Python SDK for self-hosted deployments, create a custom DeepgramClientEnvironment with your self-hosted URLs and pass it to the DeepgramClient. This approach configures all endpoint types (REST APIs, WebSocket streaming, Agent WebSocket, and Agent REST).

Below is an example of how to make your first API request to your self-hosted deployment using the Python SDK. Substitute your own host address in place of localhost if needed.

Note that the api_key field cannot be a blank string as it is a required parameter for the Python SDK, but it does not need to be a valid Deepgram API key, as authorization with Deepgram for self-hosted deployments is configured through the container, not at the individual request level.

Python
# For more Python SDK migration guides, visit:
# https://github.com/deepgram/deepgram-python-sdk/tree/main/docs
from deepgram import DeepgramClient
from deepgram.environment import DeepgramClientEnvironment
# Create a custom environment for your self-hosted deployment
self_hosted_env = DeepgramClientEnvironment(
    base="http://localhost:8080",           # HTTP endpoint for REST APIs
    production="ws://localhost:8080",       # WebSocket endpoint for streaming
    agent="ws://localhost:8080",            # WebSocket endpoint for agent
    agent_rest="http://localhost:8080"      # HTTP endpoint for agent REST
)
# Initialize the client with your custom environment
deepgram = DeepgramClient(
    api_key="a",  # placeholder for self-hosted
    environment=self_hosted_env
)
response = deepgram.listen.v1.media.transcribe_url(
    url="https://static.deepgram.com/examples/Bueller-Life-moves-pretty-fast.wav",
    model="nova-3",
    smart_format=True
)
print(response)
# Alternative: Use environment variables for URLs
import os
self_hosted_env = DeepgramClientEnvironment(
    base=os.getenv("DEEPGRAM_BASE_URL", "http://localhost:8080"),
    production=os.getenv("DEEPGRAM_WS_URL", "ws://localhost:8080"),
    agent=os.getenv("DEEPGRAM_AGENT_URL", "ws://localhost:8080"),
    agent_rest=os.getenv("DEEPGRAM_AGENT_REST_URL", "http://localhost:8080")
)

The .NET SDK provides DeepgramHttpClientOptions (pre-recorded) and DeepgramWsClientOptions (streaming) classes, through which you can pass your host address. Below is a streaming example. Note that you should provide the /v1 suffix to the base address.

C#
var apiKey = "<your API key>";
var options = new DeepgramWsClientOptions(){
  BaseAddress = "ws://localhost:8080/v1"
};
var liveClient = new LiveClient(apiKey, options);

If you encounter the following error message, note that you are receiving a 400 (bad request) when a 101 (successful stream) is expected.

Error: "The server returned status code \u0027400\u0027 when status code \u0027101\u0027 was expected."

Ensure that your request parameters are specifying a model that you have available on your self-hosted instance. For example, when you intend to serve requests through a Nova-3 model, specify the following params:

C#
var liveSchema = new LiveSchema()
{
  Model = "nova-3",
  SmartFormat = true,
};

If that model is not present in your models/ directory, the above error will occur.

To modify the Host option in type-client.go:

Go
// ClientOptions defines any options for the client
type ClientOptions struct {
	...
	Host       string // override for the host endpoint
	...
	SelfHosted bool   // set to true if using self-hosted
  ...
}

You can create an object of type ClientOptions and then set the Host value.

Go
	// create a Deepgram client
	c := client.New("", interfaces.ClientOptions{
		Host: "http://localhost:8080",
    SelfHosted: true,
	})

To modify the URL, you can pass the url property within the global object to a new client.

JavaScript
const { DeepgramClient } = require("@deepgram/sdk");
const client = new DeepgramClient({
  apiKey: "DEEPGRAM_API_KEY",
  baseUrl: "http://localhost:8080", // Set the desired URL here
});

Use Environment.custom() to point all API traffic (REST and WebSocket) to your self-hosted endpoint.

Java
import com.deepgram.DeepgramClient;
import com.deepgram.core.Environment;
Environment selfHostedEnv = Environment.custom()
    .base("http://localhost:8080")    // REST endpoint
    .agent("ws://localhost:8080")     // Agent WebSocket endpoint
    .production("ws://localhost:8080") // STT/TTS WebSocket endpoint
    .build();
// The api_key value is required by the SDK but is not validated
// by self-hosted deployments — use any non-empty string.
DeepgramClient client = DeepgramClient.builder()
    .apiKey("self-hosted")
    .environment(selfHostedEnv)
    .build();

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