parlor social preview
tts-stt1,822Apache 2.0

parlor

On-device, real-time multimodal AI. Have natural voice and vision conversations with an AI that runs entirely on your machine. Powered by Gemma 4 E2B and Kokor…

Updated Jun 8, 2026
GitHub
Platforms
macos, linux, web
Pricing
free-open-source
Status
active
License
Apache 2.0

What it does

Core capabilities at a glance

  • Apple Silicon
  • Gemma
  • Kokoro
  • Litert LM
  • Local LLM
  • MLX
  • Multimodal
  • ON Device AI

Deep dive

The full breakdown - performance, comparisons, and setup

parlor

parlor is a speech (TTS/STT) tool - On-device, real-time multimodal AI. Have natural voice and vision conversations with an AI that runs entirely on your machine. Powered by Gemma 4 E2B and Kokoro.

Overview

On-device, real-time multimodal AI. Have natural voice and vision conversations with an AI that runs entirely on your machine.

Parlor uses Gemma 4 E2B for understanding speech and vision, and Kokoro for text-to-speech. You talk, show your camera, and it talks back, all locally.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cb0ffb2e-f84f-48e7-872c-c5f7b5c6d51f

I'm self-hosting a totally free voice AI on my home server to help people learn speaking English. It has hundreds of monthly active users, and I've been thinking about how to keep it free while making it sustainable.

The obvious answer: run everything on-device, eliminating any server cost. Six months ago I needed an RTX 5090 to run just the voice models in real-time.

Google just released a super capable small model that I can run on my M3 Pro in real-time, with vision too! Sure you can't do agentic coding with this, but it is a game-changer for people learning a new language. Imagine a few years from now that people can run this locally on their phones. They can point their camera at objects and talk about them. And this model is multi-lingual, so people can always fallback to their native language if they want. This is essentially what OpenAI demoed a few years ago.

parlor is open-source, written primarily in HTML, with 1,822 GitHub stars under the Apache 2.0 license. It was last updated on 2026-06-04.

Key capabilities

From the project's documentation:

  • Barge-in. Interrupt the AI mid-sentence by speaking.
  • Sentence-level TTS streaming. Audio starts playing before the full response is generated.
  • macOS with Apple Silicon, or Linux with a supported GPU
  • ~3 GB free RAM for the model
  • Gemma 4 by Google DeepMind
  • LiteRT-LM by Google AI Edge

Install

A quick way to get started (always check the official docs for the latest):

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

How it fits a local-AI stack

parlor runs on your own hardware, so pair it with a model and a GPU sized to your needs. Use the VRAM calculator to pick a model that fits your card, and see what you can run for hardware guidance. Related speech (TTS/STT) tools in the directory:

Sources

Stats from GitHub, 2026-06-08.

Frequently asked

Quick answers to common questions

What is parlor?

parlor is a tts-stt tool for local AI workloads. On-device, real-time multimodal AI. Have natural voice and vision conversations with an AI that runs entirely on your machine. Powered by Gemma 4 E2B and Kokor…

Is parlor free and open source?

Yes, parlor has 1,822 GitHub stars and is licensed under Apache 2.0. You can self-host it for free on macos, linux, web.

What platforms does parlor support?

parlor runs on macos, linux, web.

What hardware do I need for parlor?

The hardware requirements depend on which models you run. Check our hardware directory for compatible GPUs and systems. parlor has 1,822 GitHub stars and an active community.

Does parlor support GPU acceleration?

parlor supports GPU acceleration via CUDA, Metal, or Vulkan depending on your platform. For the best performance, pair it with an NVIDIA RTX 4090 or 5090.

What are the best alternatives to parlor?

Popular alternatives include other tts-stt tools in our directory. Browse our full collection at /tool for comparisons, community reviews, and benchmark data to find the right fit for your workflow.

How much does parlor cost?

parlor is free-open-source. It is completely free and open source to self-host.

Pairs well with

Complementary tools, models, and hardware

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