githuganswered from live GitHub & Hugging Face data
What's the best model for text-to-speech tasks in 2026 — Audio8/Audio8-TTS-Preview-0.6b or another model?
The leading text-to-speech model as of 2026 is the Audio8/Audio8-TTS-Preview-0.6b, boasting over 11,000 downloads and a solid Apache 2.0 license, setting a high bar for other contenders.
Here's how it stands against its peers:
| Model | Downloads | Likes | License | Gated | Last Updated | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audio8/Audio8-TTS-Preview-0.6b | 11,276 | 231 | Apache-2.0 | No | 2026-07-31 | ✅ |
| mlx-community/Audio8-TTS-Preview-0.6b-bf16 | 138 | 1 | Apache-2.0 | No | 2026-08-04 | ⚠️ |
| Audio8/Audio8-TTS-Preview-0.6B-ONNX-INT4 | 124 | 33 | Apache-2.0 | No | 2026-08-02 | ⚠️ |
| Audio8/GPA | 65 | 31 | Apache-2.0 | No | 2026-04-09 | ⚠️ |
| Audio8/GPA-v1.5 | 55 | 23 | Apache-2.0 | No | 2026-04-29 | ⚠️ |
Verdict
The Audio8/Audio8-TTS-Preview-0.6b is the most adopted option and is actively maintained (last updated less than a month ago). It is equipped for multiple languages and robust features like voice cloning, making it the safest choice for serious projects.
Despite being a promising contender, the other models, including mlx-community/Audio8-TTS-Preview-0.6b-bf16 and Audio8/Audio8-TTS-Preview-0.6B-ONNX-INT4, lag significantly in usage, holding only a handful of downloads.
Choose Audio8/Audio8-TTS-Preview-0.6b if you need a reliable, well-supported solution for text-to-speech tasks.