Speaches
App in the BluixApps catalog
What it is
Speaches is a self-hosted speech-to-text (STT) and text-to-speech (TTS) server with OpenAI-compatible API. Wraps Whisper (STT), Piper / Kokoro (TTS), and exposes them as the standard /v1/audio/transcriptions and /v1/audio/speech OpenAI endpoints.
Drop-in replacement for OpenAI Whisper API at $0/transcription — runs on your own VPS or GPU.
What it's for
- Self-hosted transcription — replace OpenAI Whisper API with predictable VPS cost
- Voice assistant TTS — synthesize speech for self-hosted Alexa-style apps
- Audio content production — bulk transcribe podcasts, meetings, lectures
- Real-time streaming STT — live captions, voice control
- Multi-language speech — Whisper handles 100+ languages out of the box
Who it's for
- Indie SaaS founders building voice features without OpenAI per-minute costs
- Podcasters bulk transcribing back catalogs without metered API spend
- Privacy-bound apps needing voice processing without cloud upload
- Voice assistant developers building self-hosted Alexa/Google Home alternatives
- AI engineers integrating voice into LLM agents (Open WebUI, LibreChat)
Why teams pick Speaches over alternatives
- OpenAI-compatible API — every OpenAI Whisper SDK works pointing at Speaches
- Multiple model sizes — Whisper tiny / base / small / medium / large
- CPU + GPU support — runs on modest hardware for testing, scales with GPU
- MIT license — commercial use unrestricted
- Streaming support — real-time transcription for live audio
- Active development — frequent releases tracking upstream Whisper
Integrations
- OpenAI SDKs — Python, JS, every official OpenAI client works
- STT engines — Whisper (multiple sizes), Faster-Whisper (optimized)
- TTS engines — Piper (fast), Kokoro (quality)
- Audio formats — MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG, FLAC input; WAV / MP3 output
- VAD — Voice Activity Detection for streaming
- Webhook support — async transcription completion callbacks
- HTTP REST — primary API surface
Notable users & community
- 5k+ GitHub stars (rapidly growing)
- Featured in self-hosted voice AI guides
- Active Discord community
- Strong adoption in privacy-bound voice applications
- Frequent releases matching OpenAI API evolution
Tips & operations
- GPU strongly recommended for large — Whisper-large on CPU = unusable; medium acceptable on modern CPU
- Pre-download models — first request downloads model; bake into image to avoid stalls
- Audio format conversion — Speaches transcodes via ffmpeg; some formats need explicit re-encoding
- Mind disk usage — Whisper models: tiny 39MB, base 74MB, small 244MB, medium 769MB, large 1.5GB
- Streaming has GPU overhead — VAD + chunking add latency on CPU
- Auth at proxy layer — Speaches has no built-in auth; protect with API key proxy
What we ship in BluixApps
- Docker compose: Speaches server + model cache volume
- Pinned
ghcr.io/speaches-ai/speaches:latest(release-tagged) - HTTPS via Let's Encrypt; API key auth via proxy
- Whisper-base + Kokoro voices pre-downloaded
- GPU passthrough optional (significantly faster for large models)
- OpenAI-compatible
/v1/audio/transcriptions+/v1/audio/speechendpoints - Stateless service — no backup needed beyond config
Get this app — pick a BluixApps plan
Same catalog. Scaling tenant isolation, white-label and support tier.
| Tier | Tenants | Catalog | Support | White-label | Monthly | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stacks | 1 | 19 curated stacks | Standard | — | $19/mo | DetailDeploy |
| Starter | 10 | Full catalog | Standard | +$15–25/mo | $49/mo | DetailDeploy |
| Pro | 25 | Full catalog | Priority bugfix | +$15–25/mo | $149/mo | DetailDeploy |
| Growth | 100 | Full catalog | Priority bugfix | +$15–25/mo | $349/mo | DetailDeploy |
| Scale | 500 | Full catalog | 7-day window | +$15–25/mo | $799/mo | DetailDeploy |
| Enterprise | Unlimited | Full catalog | Priority 7-day | Bundled | $1,499/mo | DetailDeploy |
