Side by side
ESPnet vs Voicebox
Both stand on text-to-speech tools. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free plan Open source APILinuxMac+2
Choose ESPnet for an open-source speech toolkit with broad task coverage, recipes, and pretrained-model inference options. It can also support training, though that requires additional dependencies. Look elsewhere if you need voice cloning, which ESPnet does not support.
Visit ESPnet
Free plan Open source AndroidAPIiPhone+5
Voicebox centers voice work on a local desktop app, with generation, dictation, editing, and API features. The Local plan is free forever; cloud features are still marked as coming soon.
Visit VoiceboxThe facts
| ESPnet | Voicebox | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Runs on | API, Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Windows | Android, API, iPhone, Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows |
| Lowest paid plan | Free or on request | Cloud: $12 a year |
| Plans published | 2 | 3 |
| Maker | ESPnet | Not published |
| Website | espnet.github.io | voicebox.sh |
| On text-to-speech tools | #3 of 232 | #1 of 232 |
ESPnet: what it does well
- Covers recognition, synthesis, translation, and enhancement tasks.
- Provides complete recipes for a range of speech tasks.
- Published models can run in CPU or GPU containers.
- Commercial use is permitted under Apache License 2.0.
- Offers API access and WAV export.
What to know first
- Training requires a separate extra with multiple dependencies.
- Some task-specific packages require separate installation.
- ESPnet 1 is no longer supported.
Voicebox: what it does well
- Works offline without an account.
- Local plan includes unlimited generations and captures.
- Local Whisper models support 99 languages.
- Local REST API supports speech generation.
What to know first
- Cloud backup and mobile sync are coming soon.
- Cloud pricing and limits are not final.
- Desktop downloads list specific macOS and Windows builds; Linux is built from source.
Alternatives to ESPnet Alternatives to Voicebox The whole list