What is Piper used for?

Piper is a neural text-to-speech engine that runs locally, with command-line, web server, Python and C/C++ interfaces, for developers who want offline speech output. It is a good fit for offline voice output for smart home setups, speech for screen readers and accessibility tools, and adding spoken output to local apps and scripts.

Is Piper open source?

Yes. Piper is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at OHF-Voice/piper1-gpl and is written mainly in C++.

Yes. Piper is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What is Piper an alternative to?

Piper is an open-source alternative to ElevenLabs, Murf AI and Speechify. Other open-source alternatives to ElevenLabs include ChatTTS.

Is Piper actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Piper was on 28 September 2026, and the latest release is v1.8.0, published on 4 September 2026. The project has 5.7k stars on GitHub.

Piper: open-source alternative to ElevenLabs, Murf AI

About Piper

Piper is a neural text-to-speech engine that produces spoken audio on your own computer instead of sending text to a cloud service. It embeds espeak-ng to convert text into phonemes, and a trained voice model then turns those phonemes into speech. The project is aimed at keeping synthesis fast and fully local.

Piper can be used from a command-line interface, through an HTTP web server, from a Python API or as a C/C++ library, so it fits scripts, services and embedded applications alike. The repository links to audio samples, a browser demo, a catalog of voices, and documentation for training new voices and building from source.

Piper1 is released under the GPL-3.0 licence and is written mostly in C++. The Open Home Foundation, which hosts the project, has asked for new maintainers. Its README lists many projects that build on it, among them Home Assistant, the NVDA screen reader and LocalAI, and community bindings exist for other languages such as Java.

Key features

Offline neural text-to-speech synthesis
Command-line interface for scripted use
Built-in HTTP web server
Python and C/C++ APIs
Training of new voice models
Embedded espeak-ng phonemization
Catalog of downloadable voices with samples

Good fit for

→Offline voice output for smart home setups
→Speech for screen readers and accessibility tools
→Adding spoken output to local apps and scripts

Built with: C++
Tags: text-to-speech; tts; speech-synthesis; offline; voice; espeak-ng; self-hosted; python

Piper: questions and answers

What is Piper used for?: Piper is a neural text-to-speech engine that runs locally, with command-line, web server, Python and C/C++ interfaces, for developers who want offline speech output. It is a good fit for offline voice output for smart home setups, speech for screen readers and accessibility tools, and adding spoken output to local apps and scripts.
Is Piper open source?: Yes. Piper is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at OHF-Voice/piper1-gpl and is written mainly in C++.
Is Piper free?: Yes. Piper is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What is Piper an alternative to?: Piper is an open-source alternative to ElevenLabs, Murf AI and Speechify. Other open-source alternatives to ElevenLabs include ChatTTS.
Is Piper actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Piper was on 28 September 2026, and the latest release is v1.8.0, published on 4 September 2026. The project has 5.7k stars on GitHub.