11.9k stars · GPL-3.0 · 7.2.8 (2026-03-22) · Track this in Scout
Free Microsoft neural TTS with strong Russian voices and word-boundary timings — no key, no GPU, no cost.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
A small Python package that reaches Microsoft Edge's online text-to-speech service without needing Edge, Windows or an API key. It returns MP3 audio plus word-boundary timings, and ships both a command-line tool and a Python API.
What it is good for. Anyone already paying per word for voiceover, which is the right call for the version that ships. The problem is that paying per draft is what stops the drafting: you write the script once, narrate it once, and never test a second phrasing of the intro. This makes the draft free. Narrate every version, listen back, cut the boring thirty seconds, and only then spend paid credit on the final cut — and do the same for a Russian edition, where the Microsoft voices are unusually good.
- Genuinely free, no account, no key, no GPU — it runs on anything
- Russian voices are excellent, which is the harder half of a bilingual channel to serve
- Word-boundary timings come free, so subtitles line up without a second pass
- It talks to an undocumented Microsoft endpoint. That is a grey area for commercial use, and it can break without notice
- GPL-3.0 — keep it as an external command-line step, never import it into a closed-source application
- Less expressive than ElevenLabs. Fine for drafts and tutorials, thinner for a polished brand video
pip install edge-tts
