Stays on your device. The voice model runs in your browser with WebGPU (or WebAssembly fallback). Your text never leaves your device. No upload, no signup, unlimited use.
Why people look past ElevenLabs for everyday text to speech
ElevenLabs makes the most realistic AI voices on the market, and if you are producing an audiobook or a commercial voiceover it is probably worth paying for. But the free tier is a trial in practice: as of August 2026 it requires an account and meters you to roughly ten minutes of audio a month, with attribution required for commercial use. For the everyday jobs, hearing a draft read aloud, narrating a demo, generating a voice line for a video, the meter is the product.
The tool above removes the meter by removing the server. It downloads the open source Kokoro model into your browser once, then synthesizes speech on your own hardware: unlimited characters, eight curated English voices, a speed control, and WAV download. Nothing you type is uploaded anywhere, and there is no account to create.
ElevenLabs free tier vs this tool
| ElevenLabs (free tier) | PocketWebTools | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly allowance | About 10,000 credits (roughly 10 minutes) | Unlimited |
| Signup required | Yes | No |
| Commercial use | With attribution | Yes, no attribution |
| Where speech is generated | ElevenLabs' cloud | On your device (WebGPU or WASM) |
| Works offline | No | Yes, once the model is cached |
| Voices | Thousands, plus voice cloning | 8 curated English voices |
| Peak voice realism | Best in class | Natural for everyday reads |
| Audio download | Yes, metered | WAV, unlimited |
ElevenLabs plan details as of August 2026; check their pricing page for current terms.
The honest trade-off
This is not a claim that an 82 million parameter on-device model beats ElevenLabs' flagship voices, because it does not. It is a claim about fit: most text-to-speech jobs need a clear, pleasant voice with zero friction, not a studio performance with a monthly meter. When the job is bigger than that, spend the money. When it is not, the tool above costs nothing, asks for nothing, and keeps your text on your machine.
The privacy claim is verifiable rather than promised: load the page, generate one line so the model caches, disconnect from the internet, and generate another. It works, because there is no server involved.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this really free and unlimited?
- Yes. The Kokoro speech model runs inside your browser on your own hardware, so there is no per-character cloud bill behind it. No credits, no monthly meter, no signup, no watermark. Generate as much audio as your device can produce.
- How do the voices compare to ElevenLabs?
- Honestly: ElevenLabs is ahead on maximum realism, voice variety, and instant cloning quality, which is what you pay for. Kokoro is an 82 million parameter open model that sounds natural on everyday English reads such as narration, articles, and scripts. Paste the same paragraph into both and let your ears decide whether the gap matters for your use.
- Do I need an account?
- No. As of August 2026, ElevenLabs' free tier requires signup and includes about 10,000 credits a month, roughly ten minutes of audio. This tool has no account and no meter at any point.
- Can I use the generated audio commercially?
- Yes. The Kokoro model and its ONNX weights are Apache 2.0 licensed and we add no restrictions or attribution requirement of our own. ElevenLabs' free plan permits commercial use only with attribution as of August 2026.
- Does my text get uploaded?
- No. The model downloads to your browser once (roughly 92 MB on WASM, 326 MB on WebGPU) and synthesis happens on your device. After the model is cached you can disconnect from the internet and it keeps working, which is a test no cloud TTS can pass.
- What about voice cloning?
- ElevenLabs' headline feature has a local sibling here too: our voice cloning tool runs the MIT-licensed Chatterbox model entirely in your browser. It is desktop-only and English, with a roughly 1.5 GB model download, and your voice sample never leaves the device.