Silero or Piper: which to choose for business
Both are lightweight, run on a CPU and speak Russian; both allow commercial use only with conditions. Silero is built for Russian and v5 added CIS languages and languages of Russia (Tatar, Bashkir, Yakut, Kazakh); the main models are non-commercial CC BY-NC, while the CIS base models are MIT. Piper runs even on a Raspberry Pi and ships ready voices in 35+ languages, including several Russian ones; the engine is MIT or GPL-3.0 and each voice has its own license. Silero was updated more recently (2025-11 vs 2025-03).
Comparison based on catalog data
| Parameter | Silero TTS | Piper |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Text to speech | Text to speech |
| Developer | Silero, Russia | Rhasspy / Open Home Foundation, USA |
| Releases | Feb 2022 – Nov 2025 | Jun 2023 – Mar 2025 |
| Sizes | tens of megabytes | about 5M – 30M |
| Hardware | Laptop | Laptop |
| Commercial use | Commercial use with conditions | Commercial use with conditions |
| License | Main models are CC BY-NC (non-commercial); the base models for CIS languages, v5_cis_base, are MIT | The old engine is MIT, the new piper1-gpl is GPL-3.0; each voice has its own license (some free, some non-commercial) |
| Russian | Supported | Supported |
| Ollama | No | No |
| Without GPU | Yes | Yes |
| Tasks |
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Choose Silero TTS if
- You need voices in languages of Russia: Tatar, Bashkir, Yakut
- The project is for the public sector, regions or education
- Russian is your main voice-over language
Choose Piper if
- Speech synthesis must run on a Raspberry Pi or an offline device
- You need many languages: Piper has more than 35
- Smart home, kiosks, terminals and voice menus
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