eSpeak NG
Ranked 2 of 3 text-to-speech software by recommenders
Free speech synthesizer that people find reliable for alignment, runs on every platform and lets you tune parameters; one critic says its architecture is dated and it has few maintainers.
Free speech synthesizer that people find reliable for alignment, runs on every platform and lets you tune parameters; one critic says its architecture is dated and it has few maintainers.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 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
Other text-to-speech software people recommend
The two most recommended other text-to-speech software, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vāgdhenu Sanskrit Chanting TTS System | 12 | 1 | 92% | 1 | — | — |
| eSpeak NGThis page | 6 | 1 | 86% | 5 | — | — |
| Eloquence speech synthesizer | 5 | 1 | 83% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
All 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“espeak/espeak-ng with an MBROLA (an Overlapped Add model) voice”
“Traditional NLP is far better at this task”
“espeak based alignment. pretty basic, but it worked wonders in terms of reliability and accuracy.”
“the output quality should match the original exactly”
“the software 'just works' on every platform”
“ESpeak uses an odd architecture originally designed for computers in 1995, and has few maintainers”
“lets you tune the parameters”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.