Maya1 vs Kokoro vs Kitten TTS Review

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

March 2026

I finally got to test TTS models, and got them running locally with a variety of notes.

Kitten: advertised as the smallest model, its also the easiest to setup
Kokoro: an extremely good model for its size. I found getting it setup with the onnx wrapping to be the most straightforward (supports quants!)
Maya1: supports gguf. I ended up hosting it in LM Studio with a wrapper to have it working. This is the best quality but also the slowest

TLDR: Use Kokoro if you want a good balance of speed and quality, otherwise Maya1 is a suitable model if you’re willing to wait a bit

TTS on NoRaincheck