Tortoise TTS
Slow, but the quality is worth the wait.
Open Source 4–8 GB VRAM
- Min VRAM
- 4 GB
- GPU class
- Entry GPU
- Quant
- FP16
Actually FreeNo SignupOpen SourceWatermark-Free
Bark
Suno's expressive transformer-based TTS.
Open Source 8–12 GB VRAMRuns locally
Actually FreeNo SignupOpen SourceWatermark-FreeHobbyist-FriendlyAPI
Visit BarkUpdated 2025-08-14 · Direct link
Hardware requirements
Runs locally · Entry GPU (6–8 GB)
Min VRAM
8 GB
Rec. VRAM
12 GB
Min RAM
16 GB
Rec. RAM
16 GB
Disk
8 GB
GPU class
Entry GPU
11.7+Apple Silicon ✓CPU-CapableQuant: FP16
CPU works but slow (5–10× realtime). 8 GB VRAM comfortable; 12 GB for batch.
Screenshot placeholder · Bark
What is Bark?
Bark is a fully generative text-to-audio model from Suno: not just speech but laughter, sighs, music, and background noises. Wholly different shape from VITS/Tortoise — outputs are creative and unpredictable, which is its charm and its limitation.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Genuinely expressive — emotion, laughter, ambient sounds in one model
- Supports 100+ languages out of the box
- Multi-speaker presets for consistent voices
Cons
- Non-deterministic — same prompt can produce very different takes
- Can hallucinate words or skip text on longer inputs
- Slower than VITS-based TTS at the same quality tier
What's actually free?
MIT-licensed; full weights publicly released.
✓ Actually FreeNo SignupOpen SourceWatermark-Free
Alternatives
XTTS v2 (Coqui)
Multilingual voice cloning in 6 seconds.
Open Source 4–6 GB VRAM
- Min VRAM
- 4 GB
- GPU class
- Entry GPU
- Quant
- FP16
Actually FreeNo SignupOpen SourceWatermark-Free
F5-TTS
Zero-shot voice cloning TTS — 15 s of audio is enough.
Open Source 8–12 GB VRAM
- Min VRAM
- 8 GB
- GPU class
- Mid GPU
- Quant
- FP16
Actually FreeNo SignupOpen SourceWatermark-Free