diff --git a/faster_whisper/transcribe.py b/faster_whisper/transcribe.py
index de9a0f1..6291fa2 100644
--- a/faster_whisper/transcribe.py
+++ b/faster_whisper/transcribe.py
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 import collections
+import os
 import zlib
 
 from typing import BinaryIO, List, Optional, Tuple, Union
@@ -81,10 +82,15 @@ class WhisperModel:
             inter_threads=num_workers,
         )
 
+        tokenizer_file = os.path.join(model_path, "tokenizer.json")
+        if os.path.isfile(tokenizer_file):
+            self.tokenizer = tokenizers.Tokenizer.from_file(tokenizer_file)
+        else:
+            self.tokenizer = tokenizers.Tokenizer.from_pretrained(
+                "openai/whisper-tiny" + ("" if self.model.is_multilingual else ".en")
+            )
+
         self.feature_extractor = FeatureExtractor()
-        self.tokenizer = tokenizers.Tokenizer.from_pretrained(
-            "openai/whisper-tiny" + ("" if self.model.is_multilingual else ".en")
-        )
         self.eot_id = self.tokenizer.token_to_id("<|endoftext|>")
         self.timestamp_begin_id = self.tokenizer.token_to_id("<|notimestamps|>") + 1
         self.input_stride = 2