| id |
espeak-ng |
| name |
eSpeak NG |
| url |
https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng |
| category |
tools |
| subcategories |
|
| license |
GPL-3.0-or-later |
| license_spdx |
GPL-3.0-or-later |
| commercial |
true |
| attribution_required |
false |
| formats |
|
| tags |
|
| added |
2026-08-24 |
| verified |
2026-09-22 |
| status |
active |
Formant (robotic) TTS for 100+ languages. Useful for placeholder VO, accessibility debug lines, and tiny footprints where neural models are overkill. The program is GPL-3.0 or later (COPYING). GitHub README also notes a BSD-2 getopt.c exception on Windows. Pages fetched on 2026-08-24 do not say the WAV you synthesize is yours. Shipping the engine inside a closed game is a GPL event. Shipping a bounced line may not be; that split is inferred. Prefer piper-plus / kokoro-82m when you need MIT/Apache TTS code.
- Evidence: repo README "License Information" plus
COPYING (GPL v3). GitHub SPDX GPL-3.0
espeak-ng-data (voices, dictionaries) lives in-tree under the same GPL. Do not treat voices as a separate Apache grant- This is why Piper Plus advertises "without espeak-ng"
- Checklist: license file visible, commercial use of the program under GPL, no NC/ND, not a marketplace, named org, not blocklisted, engine vs WAV unquoted
- The project states "GPL version 3 or later", so the SPDX identifier is
GPL-3.0-or-later. The bundled getopt.c is BSD-2-Clause.
- Live GitHub README (2026-09-22): "eSpeak NG Text-to-Speech is released under the GPL version 3 or later license"
- Live GitHub README, License Information (2026-08-24): "released under the GPL version 3 or later license"
- Live
COPYING (2026-08-24): "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3, 29 June 2007"