Bark
Text-to-audio for speech and laughter. It's for people making images, video, or audio. It's free.
Get patch notes
Same daily newsletter as the rest of the site. One email a day.
No affiliate link on file. Outbound goes to huggingface.co. Identity checked October 21, 2026. Score null is from the run on October 21, 2026.
Grade
We tried it ourselves. Grade D.
- Grade
- D · We tried it
- Score
- 4/10
- Price
- Free
Best for
Jobs people use this for.
Test details
Suno's text-to-audio model for speech, laughter, and simple sound effects. MIT license.
Hands-on review · 2026-10-21
TestedD4/10- CPU-only box: 8 cores, 15 GB RAM (about 4-10 GB free during tests), no GPU.
- Small model only
- No listening test
Bark worked, but it was the slowest and least accurate voice tool we've run. It took over six minutes to speak 13 seconds and turned 'Linux box' into 'one Xbox.' Its strength is expressive sounds like laughter, which we couldn't check by ear. For plain narration, Kokoro or Piper are far better on a CPU.
Works locally, but very slow on CPU and mangled a key phrase.
- Coverage
- TTS script plus a [laughs] line. Intelligibility from whisper.cpp. No listening test.
- What we tested
- The site's TTS script, plus a short line with a [laughs] cue. Intelligibility scored with whisper.cpp.
Method
transformers 5.20 BarkModel suno/bark-small, voice v2/en_speaker_6, torch CPU, seed 0.
Measured
- full_script383.3 s for 13.1 s of audio (29x slower than real time). WER 0.121: 'clean Linux box' came out as 'clean one Xbox'
- laugh_line167.8 s for 5.7 s (29x). Laugh not verified by ear
- peak_rssabout 2 GB
Pros
- MIT licence, fully local
- Can do non-speech cues like laughter (not verified by ear)
Cons
- Extremely slow on CPU: 6+ minutes for 13 seconds of speech
- Least accurate TTS we've tested (WER 0.12, garbled 'Linux box')
- Output is random from run to run
- Status
- Not run
- Date
- October 21, 2026
- Time to first output
- —
- Cost
- —
- Result
- —
- Evidence
- Log linked below
Queued task. Render a fixed script in a chosen voice. Log time to the first usable take and artifacts.
FAQ
What is the agent-tested verdict for Bark?
Text-to-audio for speech and laughter. It's for people making images, video, or audio. It's free. We tried it ourselves. Grade D.
How much does Bark cost?
Free. Free, open source
Do sponsors outrank this tool?
No. A sponsored slot is labeled and sold separately from tiers. It cannot move this listing.