Comparison of speech synthesizers
Here is a non-exhaustive comparison of speech synthesis programs :
General
| Creator(s) | First public release date | Latest stable version | Software license | Cost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple PlainTalk | Apple Inc. | 1984 | 2007, October 26 | Bundled with Mac OS X | Bundled |
| AT&T Natural Voices | AT&T Natural Voices | ? | 2008 | Proprietary | $295 – $995 |
| Cepstral | Cepstral | 2000 | 2013 | Proprietary | $29+ |
| CereProc | CereProc | 2006 | 2012, August | Proprietary | £25.99+ |
| eSpeak | Jonathan Duddington | 2006, February 10 | 2014, April 6 | GPLv3+ | Free |
| Ekho | Cameron Wong | 2008, March 26 | 2013, January 15 | GPLv2+ | Free |
| Festival Speech Synthesis System | CSTR | ? | 2014, December | MIT-like license | Free |
| FreeTTS | Paul Lamere Philip Kwok Dirk Schnelle-Walka Willie Walker ... |
2001, December 14 | 2009, March 9 | BSD | Free |
| IVONA TTS | IVONA Software | 2005 | ? | Proprietary | Free for Android |
| Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000 | Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inc. | 1996 | 2005 | Proprietary | ? |
| Loquendo | Loquendo | 1975 | 2011 | Proprietary | ? |
| Neospeech | Neospeech | 2002 | 2013 | Proprietary | ? |
| Nuance Vocalizer | Nuance Communications, Inc. | ? | 2013 | Proprietary | ? |
| Praat | Paul Boersma David Weenink |
? | 2014, December 28 | GPL | Free |
| SVOX | Nuance Communications, Inc. | ? | ? | Proprietary | ? |
| Voxygen Expressive Speech | Voxygen SAS | 2011, September | ? | Proprietary | ? |
Technical voice details
| Platform | SSML | SAPI version | WS | PLS | CLI | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AT&T Natural Voices | Yes | 5.1 | ? | ? | ? | |
| Cepstral (company) | Yes | 5.x | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| CereProc | Yes | 5.x | Yes | ? | Yes | |
| IVONA TTS | 1.0/1.1 | 5.1 /5.3 | Yes | 1.0 | Yes | |
| eSpeak | ||||||
| Festival Speech Synthesis System | ||||||
| FreeTTS | ||||||
| Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000 | ||||||
| Loquendo | ||||||
| Neospeech | Yes | 5.x | ||||
| Nuance Vocalizer | ||||||
| Praat | ||||||
| SVOX | ||||||
| Voxygen Expressive Speech | Yes | 5.x | ? | Yes | ? |
Technical details
| Online demo | Available language(s) | Available voices(s) | Programming language | Operating system(s) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple PlainTalk | ? | English (United States), ... | 15+ | ? | Macintosh |
| AT&T Natural Voices | Yes | English (British), English (Indian), English (US), French, French (Canadian), German, Italian, Spanish (Latin American) | 20 | C++ | Linux Windows |
| Cepstral | Yes | English (British), English (US), Italian, French (Canadian), German, Spanish (American), ... | 25+ | C/C++ | Mac OS X Windows i386-Linux x86-64-Linux Sparc-Solaris i386-Solaris |
| CereProc | Yes | English (British), English (US), English (Scottish), English (Irish), French, German, Austrian German, Italian, Spanish (Castillan), Spanish (Latin American), Dutch | 21 | C/Python | Linux Windows Mac OS X Embedded Linux Android iOS |
| eSpeak | Samples | Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Cantonese, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (British, US, Scottish, Westindies…), Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French (France, Belgium), Georgian, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Kannada, Kurdish, Latvian, Lojban, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese, Welsh. | Several | C++ | Linux Windows Mac OS X RISC OS |
| Ekho | Yes | Cantonese, Mandarin (standard Chinese), Zhaoan Hakka (a dialect in Taiwan), Tibetan, Ngangien (an ancient Chinese before Yuan Dynasty) and Korean | 7 | C++ | Linux Windows Android |
| Festival Speech Synthesis System | Yes | English… | Several | C++ | Linux Windows |
| FreeTTS | ? | English… | Several | Java | Cross-platform |
| IVONA TTS | Yes | Danish, Dutch, English (Australian), English (US), English (UK), English (Welsh), French, French (Canadian), German, Icelandic, Italian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Spanish (American), Spanish (Castilian), Welsh | 43 | C/C++ | Windows Linux Android |
| Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000 | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Neospeech | Yes | English (US), English (British), American Spanish, Canadian French, Chinese Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | 13 | C/C++/Java | Windows Linux |
| Nuance Loquendo | Yes | English (Australian), English (British), English (US), Castilian Spanish, Catalan, Valencian, Galician, French, German, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Mexican Spanish, Chilean, Argentinean, American Spanish, Canadian French, Turkish, Finnish, Russian, Danish, Norwegian, Arabic, Romanian | 74 | ? | Windows Linux |
| Nuance Vocalizer | Yes | English (Australian), English (British), English (US), Portuguese (Brazilian), French (Canadian), German, Spanish (Latin American) | 70+ | C/C++ | Windows Linux |
| Praat | ? | ? | ? | C | Windows Linux Macintosh FreeBSD Solaris |
| Nuance SVOX | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Voxygen Expressive Speech | Yes | French, French (Canadian), French (African), English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic | 47 | C/C++, Java and Python | Windows Linux Android |