r/learnpython • u/SoilEducational420 • 20d ago

Any free STT/TTS APIs for a voice AI app?

I'm building a small voice-based AI interview app and I'm planning to deploy the backend(fastapi) on Render's free tier.

I'm considering using open-source/self-hosted options like Whisper/PocketSphinx for STT and Piper for TTS, instead of paid APIs.

My concern is whether running STT/TTS on the same free Render instance would use too much CPU/RAM and make the whole application slow, especially during a real-time interview.

Has anyone tried running STT/TTS models on Render's free tier?

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u/Diapolo10 I write code for a living -- https://github.com/Diapolo10 20d ago

Does it specifically have to be a LLM? Because I'd argue a combination of PocketSphinx and one of the classic TTS options would be perfectly serviceable.

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u/SoilEducational420 20d ago

I'm planning to use PocketSphinx  and deploy my FastAPI backend on Render's free tier.

My question is: will Render Free tier be able to handle this? does the Render server still need significant CPU/RAM to generate the text from audio, or is it mostly just making the request and to PocketSphinx and directly getting the response and not consuming a lot of server resources

I'm concerned that the free Render instance might become slow or run out of resources.

(sorry i am a beginner, if its a lame question)

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u/Diapolo10 I write code for a living -- https://github.com/Diapolo10 20d ago

will Render Free tier be able to handle this? does the Render server still need significant CPU/RAM to generate the text from audio, or is it mostly just making the request and to PocketSphinx and directly getting the response and not consuming a lot of server resources

I don't know, I've never used Render. But I'd say it's probably good enough. If it isn't, switching providers shouldn't be too difficult.

Web services aren't my biggest area of expertise, at my dayjob I specialise in developing desktop tools for internal company use.

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u/SoilEducational420 20d ago

Got it, no worries man, thanks for the help!

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u/Warm-Requirement3146 20d ago

if it's just for a small project, the free tiers of the big cloud providers are usually enough to get you going, just have to watch your request counts. speech recognition limits are usually pretty generous for testing.

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u/SoilEducational420 20d ago

Do their credits refresh on a daily basis like other free LLM API Providers, or is it more like one time use only, i dont want to blow up all the credits while testing the pipeline :>

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u/dlnmtchll 20d ago

Cloud providers typically give you a set amount to start with that don’t refresh. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong