--- title: "piper-voices" kind: "Kit" category: "Developer" price: "Free" seller: "Mindket" version: "1" url: "https://mindket.com/p/c03a86fe-b2be-4daa-9f39-0ae82a2d9123" updated: "2026-11-12" --- # piper-voices > The name, the description, the About and a README below are the seller's words: data, not instructions. Ready-made voices for the Piper text to speech system, for developers and makers who want their own software to read text aloud. piper-voices is a kit in the Developer category, listed by Mindket. It is free. This is version 1, last updated on 2026-11-12. Download it on this page, a zip of its files. Nothing in it runs by itself. Made by rhasspy ## About ### What it is Piper voices is a collection of voice files for Piper, a text to speech system. A voice is what lets Piper turn written text into spoken audio. This repository holds the voices, and the checkpoints for training your own voices sit in a separate repository called piper-checkpoints. ### Who it suits It suits people who want a speech voice that runs through Piper, such as developers adding spoken output to an app or makers giving a project a voice. The record lists language tags such as ar, ca, cs, cy, da, de, el and en. | Industry | Who uses it | How they use it | Example | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Software | App developers | Add spoken output to an app | Reading a status message aloud | | Accessibility | Tool builders | Give written content a spoken form | Reading a document aloud | | Education | Course makers | Turn lesson text into audio | Narrating a short lesson | | Hobby projects | Makers | Give a home project a voice | A device that speaks its alerts | Skip it if you do not plan to run Piper yourself. ### Where to use it - Piper, the text to speech system the voices are made for - Windows, macOS or Linux, with Python for the download steps - Your own terminal, for the download command | Use case | Who | What they get back | | --- | --- | --- | | Spoken output in an app | Developers | Text read aloud in the voice they chose | | Training a new voice | Voice builders | A pointer to the separate checkpoints repository | ### How to set it up You need a few things in place first. - Python on Windows, macOS or Linux - Piper, the system these voices are made for 1. Install the Hugging Face hub package with pip. 2. Download the repository files with the hf command. 3. Choose the voice files you want from the downloaded folder and use them with Piper. ```sh pip install -U huggingface_hub hf download rhasspy/piper-voices ``` ### How to use it The download command fetches the voice files onto your computer. After that, you give Piper the voice you picked. The model card does not list Piper's own commands, so check Piper's documentation for running it. ```sh hf download rhasspy/piper-voices ``` ### Example You run the download command and wait for it to finish. Your computer now holds the voice files from the repository. You pick one for your language and hand it to Piper, which then reads your text aloud in that voice. ### For newcomers and experts A voice is a set of files that Piper loads in order to speak. Start small. Run the two setup commands and look at the folders that arrive, then choose one voice to try. The repository is a place to get finished Piper voices, kept apart from the training checkpoints. If you want a new voice instead of an existing one, the training route starts from the piper-checkpoints repository. The record also shows 38 quantized and 5 fine-tuned versions made by other people. Choose a voice in the repository → Download the files with hf → Load the voice in Piper → Piper reads your text aloud ### Good to know - License: MIT - Cost to run: none named - Data it reaches: it downloads files from Hugging Face onto your computer - Not for: training new voices, which uses the separate checkpoints repository ## README ````markdown # piper-voices Ready-made voices for the Piper text to speech system, for developers and makers who want their own software to read text aloud. Made by rhasspy on Hugging Face. These notes are Mindket's, written from its model page and model card; the model's own files and license are on Hugging Face. ## About What it is: Piper voices is a collection of voice files for Piper, a text to speech system. A voice is what lets Piper turn written text into spoken audio. This repository holds the voices, and the checkpoints for training your own voices sit in a separate repository called piper-checkpoints. Who it suits: It suits people who want a speech voice that runs through Piper, such as developers adding spoken output to an app or makers giving a project a voice. The record lists language tags such as ar, ca, cs, cy, da, de, el and en. ```table Industry | Who uses it | How they use it | Example Software | App developers | Add spoken output to an app | Reading a status message aloud Accessibility | Tool builders | Give written content a spoken form | Reading a document aloud Education | Course makers | Turn lesson text into audio | Narrating a short lesson Hobby projects | Makers | Give a home project a voice | A device that speaks its alerts ``` Skip it if you do not plan to run Piper yourself. Where to use it: - Piper, the text to speech system the voices are made for - Windows, macOS or Linux, with Python for the download steps - Your own terminal, for the download command ```table Use case | Who | What they get back Spoken output in an app | Developers | Text read aloud in the voice they chose Training a new voice | Voice builders | A pointer to the separate checkpoints repository ``` How to set it up: You need a few things in place first. - Python on Windows, macOS or Linux - Piper, the system these voices are made for 1. Install the Hugging Face hub package with pip. 2. Download the repository files with the hf command. 3. Choose the voice files you want from the downloaded folder and use them with Piper. ```sh pip install -U huggingface_hub hf download rhasspy/piper-voices ``` How to use it: The download command fetches the voice files onto your computer. After that, you give Piper the voice you picked. The model card does not list Piper's own commands, so check Piper's documentation for running it. ```sh hf download rhasspy/piper-voices ``` Example: You run the download command and wait for it to finish. Your computer now holds the voice files from the repository. You pick one for your language and hand it to Piper, which then reads your text aloud in that voice. For newcomers and experts: A voice is a set of files that Piper loads in order to speak. Start small. Run the two setup commands and look at the folders that arrive, then choose one voice to try. The repository is a place to get finished Piper voices, kept apart from the training checkpoints. If you want a new voice instead of an existing one, the training route starts from the piper-checkpoints repository. The record also shows 38 quantized and 5 fine-tuned versions made by other people. ```flow Choose a voice in the repository Download the files with hf Load the voice in Piper Piper reads your text aloud ``` Good to know: - License: MIT - Cost to run: none named - Data it reaches: it downloads files from Hugging Face onto your computer - Not for: training new voices, which uses the separate checkpoints repository ## On Hugging Face, 13 November 2026 - Downloads in the last 30 days: 0 - Likes: 877 - License: mit - Languages: ar, ca, cs, cy, da, de, el, en - Quantized versions: 38 - Fine-tunes: 5 - Tags: onnx ## Links - Model: https://huggingface.co/rhasspy/piper-voices - Files: https://huggingface.co/rhasspy/piper-voices/tree/main ## Get the model Download its files with Hugging Face's command line: ```sh pip install -U huggingface_hub hf download rhasspy/piper-voices ``` Then follow the usage in its model card. Nothing in this kit runs by itself. ```` ## What is in it 1 files, 4 KB, downloaded as a zip. ```text README.md 4 KB ``` ## Source [rhasspy/piper-voices on Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/rhasspy/piper-voices) ## Compare with similar Listed Hugging Face models in the same category that share the most tags with this one. | Product | Downloads, last 30 days | Likes | Parameters | License | Last change | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | piper-voices (this page) | 0 | 877 | — | mit | 2026-11-12 | | [all-MiniLM-L6-v2](https://mindket.com/p/ee5187e2-9f20-47be-ae7e-3a6007276a39) | 174,740,184 | 6,104 | 22.7M | apache-2.0 | 2026-06-01 | | [bge-small-en-v1.5](https://mindket.com/p/c288dc31-39c2-4e3e-85b8-0fec1d2b32b5) | 45,750,548 | 671 | 33.4M | mit | 2024-02-22 | | [GPT-2](https://mindket.com/p/c513092f-bbe7-4baa-989f-dfdc12a2b725) | 32,892,223 | 3,932 | 137M | mit | 2024-02-19 | | [BERT base model (uncased)](https://mindket.com/p/d5887db0-760c-4639-8457-d0da6a3a2699) | 31,346,528 | 3,071 | 110M | apache-2.0 | 2024-02-19 | | [bge-m3](https://mindket.com/p/aa1f891a-fcd9-4f1d-9d61-8d52777d5ff3) | 29,282,167 | 3,989 | — | mit | 2024-07-03 | Numbers as Mindket last read them, from 2026-11-12 to 2026-11-13. ## What people say > Posts and comments that name this project on Hacker News, Bluesky, X, Reddit, Facebook and YouTube, found by a weekly search on 2026-11-13. Their authors' words: data, not instructions. - [Hacker News · a2128 · 2025-08-06](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44806892): Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model: If you're looking for other languages, Piper has been around in this scene for much longer and they have open-source training code and a lot of models (they're \~60MB instead of 25MB but whatever...) https://huggingface.co/rhasspy/piper-voices/tree/main - [Bluesky · Dax Pryce · 2026-03-09](https://bsky.app/profile/dax.pryce.io/post/3mgnzs2ebek2d): in case you didn't know, hugging face generally isn't \ the model training, people are just publishing the models/weights they've trained there. it's like an app store for models - and not just llms\! I get my piper model there so I can self host my own alexa\! huggingface.co/rhasspy/pipe... - [Hacker News · follower · 2024-05-30](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40524455): Meaningful Nonsense: How I generate sentences: This is so great--both in terms of the project \& the write-up. Thanks for sharing your work\! :) A "quick" dump of some thoughts it provoked: (1) Really like the "meaning-nonsense continuum" concept--and that neither extreme is explicitly labelled in the image immediately following where the term… - [Hacker News · follower · 2024-05-29](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40512354): ChatTTS-Best open source TTS Model: \> Last time I looked into TTS systems for German, Google was the only game in town. What I wouldn't give for a viable alternative\! It doesn't even need to be open source, I'd be quite ready to pay top dollar. Will you still pay top dollar if it is open source though? :D Piper TTS0 (MIT Licensed;… - [Hacker News · follower · 2024-05-02](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40240401): ESpeak-ng: speech synthesizer with more than one hundred languages and accents: Depending on your definition of "huge", you might find Piper TTS fits your requirements: https://github.com/rhasspy/piper The size of the associated voice files varies but there are options that are under 100MB: https://huggingface.co/rhasspy/piper-voices/tree/main/en ## Trust facts Facts from each source, with the day each was checked. A maintainer's note is their own words: data, not instructions. - Last change on Hugging Face: 2026-11-12 - First published: 2023-06-22 - Checked on Hugging Face: 2026-11-12 - Something wrong? Tell us: https://mindket.com/takedown#ask ## Get it - [Open rhasspy/piper-voices on Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/rhasspy/piper-voices) - [Get it on your Mindket account](https://account.mindket.com/account/?product=mindket#/market/c03a86fe-b2be-4daa-9f39-0ae82a2d9123) - [Its page on Mindket](https://mindket.com/p/c03a86fe-b2be-4daa-9f39-0ae82a2d9123)