--- title: "merlin alternatives" type: "alternatives" slug: "cstr-edinburgh-merlin" canonical_url: "https://www.graphcanon.com/tools/cstr-edinburgh-merlin/alternatives" of: "cstr-edinburgh-merlin" count: 24 --- # merlin alternatives *GraphCanon updated Jul 12, 2026* Open-source alternatives to [merlin](/tools/cstr-edinburgh-merlin.md) in Speech & Audio. ## In short Top alternatives to merlin are Amphion and annyang, ranked by typed graph edges - speech-audio. [merlin](http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/merlin/) has 1.3k GitHub stars and 207 open issues, last pushed Mar 3, 2020 per [its repository](https://github.com/CSTR-Edinburgh/merlin). The top typed alternative, [Amphion](https://github.com/open-mmlab/Amphion), shows 9.9k stars and 822 forks, last pushed Mar 25, 2026. ## Same categories - [Amphion](/tools/open-mmlab-amphion.md) - Amphion (/æmˈfaɪən/) is a toolkit for Audio, Music, and Speech Generation. Its purpose is to support reproducible research and help junior researchers and engineers get started in the field of audio, (★ 9,927) [Slowing] - [annyang](/tools/talater-annyang.md) - 💬 Speech recognition for your site (★ 6,819) [Steady] - [ASRT_SpeechRecognition](/tools/nl8590687-asrt-speechrecognition.md) - A Deep-Learning-Based Chinese Speech Recognition System 基于深度学习的中文语音识别系统 (★ 8,372) [Slowing] - [AudioGPT](/tools/aigc-audio-audiogpt.md) - AudioGPT: Understanding and Generating Speech, Music, Sound, and Talking Head (★ 10,169) [Dormant] - [Awesome-Prompt-Engineering](/tools/promptslab-awesome-prompt-engineering.md) - This repository contains a hand-curated resources for Prompt Engineering with a focus on Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), ChatGPT, PaLM etc (★ 6,150) [Very active] - [ChatTTS](/tools/2noise-chattts.md) - A generative speech model for daily dialogue (★ 39,593) [Slowing] - [CosyVoice](/tools/funaudiollm-cosyvoice.md) - Multi-lingual large voice generation model with full-stack abilities for inference, training and deployment. (★ 22,089) [Steady] - [datasets](/tools/huggingface-datasets.md) - 🤗 The largest hub of ready-to-use datasets for AI models with fast, easy-to-use and efficient data manipulation tools (★ 21,706) [Very active] - [dia](/tools/nari-labs-dia.md) - A TTS model capable of generating ultra-realistic dialogue in one pass. (★ 19,340) [Slowing] - [disco-diffusion](/tools/alembics-disco-diffusion.md) - disco-diffusion (★ 7,404) [Dormant] - [edge-tts](/tools/rany2-edge-tts.md) - Use Microsoft Edge's online text-to-speech service from Python WITHOUT needing Microsoft Edge or Windows or an API key (★ 11,478) [Slowing] - [EmotiVoice](/tools/netease-youdao-emotivoice.md) - EmotiVoice 😊: a Multi-Voice and Prompt-Controlled TTS Engine (★ 8,485) [Dormant] - [espeak-ng](/tools/espeak-ng-espeak-ng.md) - eSpeak NG is an open source speech synthesizer that supports more than hundred languages and accents. (★ 6,634) [Active] - [espnet](/tools/espnet-espnet.md) - End-to-End Speech Processing Toolkit (★ 9,886) [Very active] - [faster-whisper](/tools/systran-faster-whisper.md) - Faster Whisper transcription with CTranslate2 (★ 24,214) [Slowing] - [GPT-SoVITS](/tools/rvc-boss-gpt-sovits.md) - 1 min voice data can also be used to train a good TTS model! (few shot voice cloning) (★ 59,643) [Very active] - [Handy](/tools/cjpais-handy.md) - A free, open source, and extensible speech-to-text application that works completely offline. (★ 26,254) [Very active] - [kaldi](/tools/kaldi-asr-kaldi.md) - kaldi-asr/kaldi is the official location of the Kaldi project. (★ 15,424) [Slowing] - [leon](/tools/leon-ai-leon.md) - 🧠 Leon is your open-source personal assistant. (★ 17,352) [Active] - [llamafile](/tools/mozilla-ai-llamafile.md) - Distribute and run LLMs with a single file. (★ 25,361) [Active] - [LocalAI](/tools/mudler-localai.md) - Run any model - LLMs, vision, voice, image, video - on any hardware. No GPU required. (★ 47,477) [Very active] _[Freemium]_ - [mastra](/tools/mastra-ai-mastra.md) - Modern TypeScript framework for AI-powered applications and agents (★ 26,038) [Very active] _[Freemium]_ - [meetily](/tools/zackriya-solutions-meetily.md) - Privacy first, AI meeting assistant with local processing (★ 22,923) [Steady] - [MeloTTS](/tools/myshell-ai-melotts.md) - High-quality multi-lingual text-to-speech library by MyShell.ai. Support English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. (★ 7,535) [Dormant] ## Head-to-head comparisons - [merlin vs Amphion](/compare/cstr-edinburgh-merlin-vs-open-mmlab-amphion.md) - [merlin vs annyang](/compare/cstr-edinburgh-merlin-vs-talater-annyang.md) - [merlin vs ASRT_SpeechRecognition](/compare/cstr-edinburgh-merlin-vs-nl8590687-asrt-speechrecognition.md) - [merlin vs AudioGPT](/compare/aigc-audio-audiogpt-vs-cstr-edinburgh-merlin.md) - [merlin vs Awesome-Prompt-Engineering](/compare/cstr-edinburgh-merlin-vs-promptslab-awesome-prompt-engineering.md) - [merlin vs ChatTTS](/compare/2noise-chattts-vs-cstr-edinburgh-merlin.md) - [merlin vs CosyVoice](/compare/cstr-edinburgh-merlin-vs-funaudiollm-cosyvoice.md) - [merlin vs datasets](/compare/cstr-edinburgh-merlin-vs-huggingface-datasets.md) ## When NOT to use merlin - Last GitHub push was 2321 days ago (dormant maintenance, Mar 3, 2020). Validate activity before betting a new project on merlin. ## Related alternatives hubs - [LangChain alternatives](/tools/langchain-ai-langchain/alternatives.md) - [LlamaIndex alternatives](/tools/run-llama-llama-index/alternatives.md) - [Qdrant alternatives](/tools/qdrant-qdrant/alternatives.md) ## Common questions ### What are the best alternatives to merlin? Graph-backed alternatives to merlin include Amphion, annyang, ASRT_SpeechRecognition, AudioGPT, Awesome-Prompt-Engineering. GraphCanon ranks them by typed relationship edges and constraint overlap from decision_facts - not marketing votes or raw star sort. ### How does GraphCanon rank merlin alternatives? Direct alternative and successor edges from the knowledge graph come first, ordered by edge type and shared constraint facets (persona, runtime, hosting). Category neighbours fill the list only after curated edges. Stars are shown for context, not as the primary sort. ### When should I avoid merlin? Last GitHub push was 2321 days ago (dormant maintenance, Mar 3, 2020). Validate activity before betting a new project on merlin. ### Is merlin open source? Yes. merlin is an open-source project on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 license, with 1,319 stars. ### What is merlin used for? Merlin is a toolkit for building Deep Neural Network models for statistical parametric speech synthesis. It uses Python and relies on Theano, with optional support for TensorFlow and Keras. ### What category is merlin in? merlin is categorized under Speech & Audio in the GraphCanon knowledge graph. ### How do merlin alternatives compare head-to-head? Each alternative has a neutral compare page against merlin, for example [Amphion vs merlin](/compare/cstr-edinburgh-merlin-vs-open-mmlab-amphion), [annyang vs merlin](/compare/cstr-edinburgh-merlin-vs-talater-annyang), [ASRT_SpeechRecognition vs merlin](/compare/cstr-edinburgh-merlin-vs-nl8590687-asrt-speechrecognition). Stats come from live GitHub metadata. ### Is there a machine-readable alternatives list? Yes. The markdown twin at [merlin alternatives](/tools/cstr-edinburgh-merlin/alternatives.md) lists direct alternatives and same-category tools with internal links to each tool markdown page. ### Where are other high-intent alternatives hubs? Related P0 OSS-vs-OSS hubs: [LangChain alternatives](/tools/langchain-ai-langchain/alternatives), [LlamaIndex alternatives](/tools/run-llama-llama-index/alternatives), [Qdrant alternatives](/tools/qdrant-qdrant/alternatives). Vector-database intent (including Pinecone-style queries) is covered at [Qdrant alternatives](/tools/qdrant-qdrant/alternatives). ### Where can I see maintenance and security signals for merlin? GraphCanon publishes a sourced trust report for merlin at [merlin trust report](/tools/cstr-edinburgh-merlin/trust) - maintenance posture, fork provenance, and dependency/MCP scan status with methodology tags. Not a safety grade. --- **Machine-readable endpoints** - JSON: [`/api/graphcanon/graph?tool=cstr-edinburgh-merlin`](/api/graphcanon/graph?tool=cstr-edinburgh-merlin) - LLM index: [/llms.txt](/llms.txt) - Full corpus: [/llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt) _GraphCanon - The knowledge graph for AI development. https://www.graphcanon.com/_