Bark
Open-source transformer text-to-audio model by Suno
Bark is a transformer-based text-to-audio model from Suno that generates speech, music, background noise and simple sound effects from text. Its repository describes it as a fully generative text-to-audio model rather than a conventional text-to-speech system. It can also produce nonverbal sounds such as laughing or sighing, triggered by cues like [laughs] or [music] in the prompt. Bark detects the input language automatically and ships with more than 100 speaker presets across 13 languages, English being the best supported. It runs on CPU or GPU through PyTorch and is released under the MIT license. The README says it was developed for research purposes.
- Filed under
- Audio & Music
- Pricing
- Free
- Platforms
- desktop · api
- Last updated
- November 10, 2026
What Bark does
- Non-speech sound cues. Prompts can include cues such as [laughs] and [music] to generate nonverbal sounds and music.
- Automatic language detection. Detects the language of the input text and supports 13 languages including English, German, Hindi and Japanese.
- Speaker presets. More than 100 speaker presets are included for choosing a voice.
- CPU or GPU inference. Runs through PyTorch on CPU or GPU, with a small-model option for lower VRAM.
- MIT license. The code and models are available for commercial use under the MIT license.
Who it’s for
- Developers experimenting with generative audio models
- Researchers needing an open-source text-to-audio model
- Self-hosted speech and sound-effect prototypes
Bark pricing
Free, open source under the MIT license; you supply your own hardware
As listed on November 9, 2026. Check github.com for current prices.
Things to know
- No custom voice cloning is supported
- Generated clips run about 13-14 seconds; longer audio needs a separate workflow
- Full model needs about 12 GB of VRAM; slow on CPU and older GPUs
Quick answers
- What is Bark?
- Bark is a transformer-based text-to-audio model from Suno that generates speech, music, background noise and simple sound effects from text.
- Is Bark free?
- Yes. Bark is free to use. (As listed on November 9, 2026.)
- Who makes Bark?
- Bark is made by Suno and has been available since 2023.
- Where can you use Bark?
- Bark is available on desktop (apps, editor plugins or browser extensions) and an API for developers.
- What are some alternatives to Bark?
- Other tools filed in the same section include Whisper, ElevenLabs and Murf AI.
Tags
See also
Cross-referenced entriesWhisper
Open-source speech recognition model from OpenAI
speech-recognitiontranscriptiontranslation
ElevenLabs
AI voice, speech, music and conversational agent platform
text-to-speechvoice-cloningdubbing
Murf AI
AI voiceover studio, text-to-speech API and voice agents
voiceovertext-to-speechdubbing
Speechify
Text-to-speech reader and voice AI assistant
text-to-speechreaderdictation