Chatterbox TTS
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 7 of 18 text-to-speech models by recommenders
People recommend Chatterbox for high-quality, natural-sounding speech and voice cloning that runs locally. The most common caveat is that it is slower than some alternatives.
People recommend Chatterbox for high-quality, natural-sounding speech and voice cloning that runs locally. The most common caveat is that it is slower than some alternatives.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
High-quality, natural-sounding output
“Chatterbox TTS Server is rather high quality”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Ghost Pepper – 100% local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS” “Chatterbox-turbo is really good too.”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Pocket TTS: A high quality TTS that gives your CPU a voice” “Chatterbox has incredible outputs.”
Comment from 9 Jan 2026 in “Sopro TTS: A 169M model with zero-shot voice cloning that runs on the CPU” - Comment from 9 Jan 2026 in “Sopro TTS: A 169M model with zero-shot voice cloning that runs on the CPU”
Voice cloning
“Chatterbox is much better in all aspects, but especially in voice cloning where T5Gemma basically did not work.”
Comment from 9 Jan 2026 in “Sopro TTS: A 169M model with zero-shot voice cloning that runs on the CPU” “because it sounds amazing, has cloning and i got it down to 0.26 ttfa/ttsa”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “The State of Modern AI Text to Speech Systems for Screen Reader Users”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slower than other options
“if you care mainly about quality, chatterbox in my tests was best fit, but its slower then the others”
Comment from 24 Jan 2026 in “The State of Modern AI Text to Speech Systems for Screen Reader Users” “the best alternative is Chatterbox-TTS-Server (slower, but quite high quality)”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Sopro TTS: A 169M model with zero-shot voice cloning that runs on the CPU” Output quality is inconsistent
“That's more hit-and-miss, but when it hits, it hits really well.”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Pocket TTS: A high quality TTS that gives your CPU a voice” Too big for some hardware
“it was just a bit too big for my rig”
Comment from 24 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What's the current best local/open speech-to-speech setup?”
Other text-to-speech models people recommend
The four most recommended other text-to-speech models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs | 59 | 20 | 75% | 13 | — | Approved |
| Kokoro TTS | 59 | 9 | 87% | 11 | 1 mo3 owners | Approved |
| Pocket TTS | 41 | 16 | 72% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Qwen3-TTS | 41 | 13 | 76% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Chatterbox TTSThis page | 13 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
What people said
15 of the 18 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“You can using chatterbox and a couple voice to voice models.”
“allows for more emotional control of the voice”
“Chatterbox TTS Server is rather high quality”
“Chatterbox Turbo is my default.”
“I'm using ChatterBox locally for TTS to avoid recurring costs and privacy leaks.”
“if you care mainly about quality, chatterbox in my tests was best fit, but its slower then the others”
“it was just a bit too big for my rig”
“because it sounds amazing, has cloning and i got it down to 0.26 ttfa/ttsa”
“That's more hit-and-miss, but when it hits, it hits really well.”
“Chatterbox-turbo is really good too.”
“Chatterbox is much better in all aspects, but especially in voice cloning where T5Gemma basically did not work.”
“Chatterbox is a great model though”
“Chatterbox has incredible outputs.”
“chatterbox is a great model and inspiration”
“the best alternative is Chatterbox-TTS-Server (slower, but quite high quality)”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.