# Gemini 3.8 text-to-speech

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Gemini 3.8 text-to-speech and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People praise its expressive, natural-sounding speech and its large voice library with tight control. Common caveat: it is not production ready and can sound artificial.

## Why people recommend it

- Expressive, natural-sounding speech (2 comments): "The Google model produces extremely expressive output. To my ears, it's on par with Eleven v3, which was already amazing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49826291)) "does not sound neither tinny nor monotone" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49818463))
- Low cost per experiment (2 comments): "it's very expensive - most of my experiments have cost less than a cent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49819440)) "Great price at least until December 31 too." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49818861))

## What people warn about

- Ignores prompt or vocal cues (2 comments): "the results are really not very good, and usually not particularly close to the prompt" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49818934)) "it is clearly ignoring the vocal cues like" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49822576))
- Randomly moans between phrases (2 comments): "we have a very different experience when it comes to moaning" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49819674)) "it randomly moans between phrases" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49819172))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [ElevenLabs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/elevenlabs.md): 59 recommend
- [Kokoro TTS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kokoro-tts.md): 59 recommend
- [Pocket TTS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pocket-tts.md): 41 recommend
- [Qwen3-TTS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qwen3-tts.md): 41 recommend
- [Kitten TTS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kitten-tts.md): 33 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://ai.google.dev/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Gemini 3.8 text-to-speech", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gemini-3-8-text-to-speech/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).