# Kitten TTS

33 Hacker News commenters recommended Kitten TTS and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Open-source text-to-speech models under 25MB that people find impressively good for their size. Common caveats: cartoonish voices and trouble with numbers and domain-specific words.

## Why people recommend it

- Beats earlier and other small models (6 comments): "this version does much better than the precious one and is the best among other <25MB models" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47443545)) "A very clear improvement from the first set of models you released some time ago." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47445231)) "This 15M is way better than the 80M model from our previous launch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47444113))
- Impressive quality for its size (5 comments): "I'm impressed with the quality given the size. I don't love the voices, but it's not bad." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442196)) "for its size it's very impressive. Just has issues pronounciating numbers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47447271)) "25MB for a TTS model that's usable is a real achievement" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47451826))
- Tiny footprint under 25MB (3 comments): "25mb is small enough that I think it'd be worth it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47443172)) "25MB is genuinely exciting for that use case." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452981)) "The <25MB figure is what stands out." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47451591))
- Expressive, high-quality output (2 comments): "The 14M variant reaches new SOTA in expressivity among similar sized models" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47082803)) "Really cool to see innovation in terms of quality of tiny models." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47443815))

## What people warn about

- Voices sound cartoonish or unserious (4 comments): "I'm impressed with the quality given the size. I don't love the voices, but it's not bad." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442196)) "The cute Kitten voices are nice, but I want something I can take seriously" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47447805)) "All but one of the voices are unusable in a business context." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442112))
- Mispronounces numbers and domain words (3 comments): "It sounded quite good indeed for the normal English stuff, but I guess predictably was quite bad at the domain-specific words." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47447919)) "for its size it's very impressive. Just has issues pronounciating numbers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47447271)) "Found they struggle with numbers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47451657))
- Heavy install dependencies like torch (3 comments): "it will pull torch and NVIDIA CUDA packages (several GB), which are not needed to run kitten." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448356)) "that dependency chain was actually breaking on my machine and failing to install" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448550)) "I literally run out of disk trying to install this on Linux." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47447632))
- Missing docs and streaming audio (3 comments): "it's weird that no "language" or "English" is mentioned on the github page" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47455568)) "there’s really no advantage over pocket TTS. There are some tradeoffs like Kitten doesn’t have streaming audio." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46829956)) "I couldn't locate how to run it on a GPU anywhere in the repo." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47443898))

## 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
- [Piper TTS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/piper.md): 21 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Kitten TTS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/kitten-tts/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).