Piper is a fast local text-to-speech engine that runs VITS voices exported to ONNX, with a CLI, web server, Python and C/C++ APIs. Development moved from the archived rhasspy/piper (MIT) to OHF-Voice/piper1-gpl, which is GPL-3.0. Voice licences vary by voice and the docs call Piper intended for personal use and research, so check each voice's MODEL_CARD. It has no voice cloning (you can train new voices) and no speech recognition.
Cite this pageRepoQuarry. “Piper.” Checked 15 Oct 2026. https://repoquarry.dev/projects/piper
How much of ElevenLabs does it replace?
1 of 4 jobs. Speech generation with preset downloadable voices; custom voices need training, no zero-shot cloning.
Partial:Speech generationPartial replacement
No:Voice cloningNot covered
No:Speech recognitionNot covered
No:Voice agentsNot covered
For voice cloning, speech recognition, voice agents, see other ElevenLabs alternatives. You may also need to build an interface, an API server and hosting yourself.
Facts, with sources
Every answer links to where we found it. We read the documentation; we did not install it.
Runs on my machine?Confirmed:Yes, fully local on CPU, optional CUDA GPUA fast and local neural text-to-speech engine that embeds espeak-ng for phonemization.github.com · piper1-gpl#readme ↗1d ago
Code licencePartial:GPL-3.0 (copyleft; PyPI package declares GPL-3.0-or-later); the archived predecessor rhasspy/piper was MITgithub.com · COPYING ↗1d ago
Model weights licencePartial:Varies per voice; voices repo is tagged MIT but each voice's MODEL_CARD lists its own dataset licence, some restrictivePiper is intended for personal use and text to speech research only; we do not impose any additional restrictions on voice models. Some voices may have restrictive licenses, however, so please review them carefully!github.com · VOICES.md ↗1d ago
Commercial usePartial:Possible with conditions; GPL-3.0 code and per-voice licences must be checkedThe MODEL_CARD file for each voice contains important licensing information.github.com · VOICES.md ↗1d ago
HardwarePartial:Runs on CPU via onnxruntime, optional CUDA; older prebuilt binaries target Raspberry Pi 3/4; no RAM numbers statedarm64 (64-bit Raspberry Pi 4)github.com · CLI.md ↗1d ago
Operating systemsConfirmed:PyPI wheels for Windows x64, macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Linux (x86_64 and aarch64)pypi.org · piper-tts#files ↗1d ago
Setup effortConfirmed:Easy, pip install piper-tts then download a voicegithub.com · CLI.md ↗1d ago
Your choice on cookies
We use essential storage to keep the site secure and remember this choice. With your permission we'd also count visits to see which pages help people, and remember your filters. We never use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, and sponsors never get your data. Cookie policy