ChatTTS

Conversational TTS model optimized for dialogue and chat applications.

Open SourceSelf HostedOffline CapableGPU Required (4GB+ VRAM)
0.0 (0)

About

ChatTTS is a generative text-to-speech model built for dialogue scenarios such as LLM assistant voices rather than long-form narration. Trained on roughly 40,000 hours of Chinese and English speech, the autoregressive model produces conversational prosody with natural pauses and can insert paralinguistic elements like laughter through fine-grained control tokens at the word and sentence level. It supports multiple speakers, mixed language input, and streaming audio generation built on a DVAE-based pipeline, and it can synthesize a 30 second clip on a GPU with about 4 GB of VRAM. The code is published under AGPLv3+, while the released weights carry a CC BY-NC 4.0 license restricting them to non-commercial use; the authors state the open model is intended for academic purposes and note that compressed quality and embedded noise were added to deter misuse. Researchers and developers exploring conversational agents in Chinese and English make up its main audience.

Should you use ChatTTS?

Pick it when

Pick ChatTTS for research or non-commercial prototypes of Chinese and English assistant voices, where conversational prosody, natural pauses, and word-level laughter tokens matter more than polished narration, on about 4 GB of VRAM.

Look elsewhere when

Skip it for any commercial product: the weights are CC BY-NC 4.0 and the authors deliberately added compression and noise to deter misuse. CosyVoice 2 or MeloTTS give clean Chinese and English output under permissive terms.

Alternatives to ChatTTS

  • CosyVoice 2

    Apache-2.0 Chinese and English synthesis with 150 ms streaming and zero-shot cloning, cleaner output for products, but heavier at around 8 GB of VRAM.

  • Dia TTS

    Apache-2.0 dialogue model with nonverbal sounds and multiple speakers, commercially usable, but English only where ChatTTS mixes Chinese and English.

  • FireRedTTS 2

    Generates multi-speaker podcast dialogues up to 3 minutes in seven languages under Apache-2.0, but needs about 9 GB of VRAM versus roughly 4 GB here.

  • MeloTTS

    MIT licensed and real-time on CPU with mixed Chinese and English sentences, but it reads text plainly without ChatTTS's conversational pauses and laughter.

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Details

Price
Free
Platform
Local/Desktop
Difficulty
Intermediate (3/5)
Minimum VRAM
4 GB
Added
Apr 3, 2026

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