Text to speech · Kiswahili
Pāṇini TTS reads Swahili as East Africans speak it, including Swahili time-telling and the English words that fill everyday customer messages.
Tumepokea malipo yako ya shilingi elfu mbili na mia tano kupitia M-Pesa. Renewal ya bima yako ya gari na Sonex imekamilika hadi tarehe thelathini Novemba, na utapokea SMS yenye link ya cheti chako.
Voices
Free to play in your browser without an account, up to 220 characters at a time. To save the audio as a file, sign up free for 10,000 characters and one voice clone, no card required: the dashboard saves WAV and the API returns MP3.
Making a video? See AI voice-over for YouTube and Reels. The audio is yours to use on monetised channels.
Last verified 24 October 2026
There is no native Swahili platform voice yet, so the playground uses Liz, a voice recorded in another language: the Swahili text is read correctly, in that voice's accent. For a local accent, clone a native Swahili speaker from a 10-second recording and use that voice for every clip.
Sign up free, then send Swahili text to the API with "output_format": "mp3" and save the file, or generate clips in the dashboard and download them. Scripts longer than the playground's 220 characters work the same way.
About Swahili
Swahili is written in the Latin alphabet with no accents and is spelled close to how it sounds. The hard part for a voice is the grammar. One verb carries subject, tense, object and meaning together, as in nitakupigia ("I will call you"), and every noun belongs to a class whose prefix runs through the sentence: kifurushi chako kitafika ("your parcel will arrive"). Stress falls on the second-to-last syllable, so long verbs must keep that rhythm. Swahili also counts the hours from about sunrise: saa nne asubuhi, literally "hour four in the morning", means 10 a.m.
Swahili is the shared language of Tanzania and Kenya and is widely used from Uganda to eastern DR Congo. Centuries of coastal trade gave it Arabic words such as saa (hour), kitabu (book) and asante (thank you), and customer messages now add English: akaunti, oda, PIN, bando ya data. In Nairobi, Sheng mixes the two even further. Much of East Africa pays bills, sends money and borrows by mobile phone, so balance alerts, loan reminders and support calls in Swahili reach customers in the language they actually speak, not the English of the terms and conditions.
Use cases
Payment confirmations, balance alerts and repayment reminders for customers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
Appointment, vaccination and medication reminders for clinics and health programmes across East Africa.
Weather, market price and collection-day calls for smallholder farmers who prefer voice to text.
Commercial use
The full wording is in our terms of service.
YouTube
Yes, AI voices are allowed. What YouTube limits is mass-produced, repetitive content: videos made from a template with little original work. Its July 2025 update renamed that rule from “repetitious” to “inauthentic” content (YouTube’s monetisation policies).
Write your own script, add your own research or editing, and keep one consistent voice for the channel. Where a realistic AI voice could mislead viewers, use YouTube’s altered or synthetic content label. The monetisation decision is always YouTube’s.
Voice cloning
Clone your voice from a 10-second recording. Your clone speaks Swahili, and every other language Pāṇini supports, in your own voice. The language comes from the text you type, so a clone recorded in English or Hindi can read a Swahili script.
Your accent comes with it: a clone sounds like you speaking Swahili, not like a different native speaker. Every free account includes one voice clone. Clone only your own voice, or a voice whose owner has agreed.
API
One request returns Swahili audio as MP3. The language is detected from the text, so no language setting is needed. Pāṇini TTS starts streaming audio in under 200 ms (time to first byte).
1curl https://api.sonexlabs.com/v1/speech \2 --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY' \3 --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \4 --data '{"text": "Tumepokea malipo yako ya shilingi elfu mbili na mia tano kupitia M-Pesa. Renewal ya bima yako ya gari na Sonex imekamilika hadi tarehe thelathini Novemba, na utapokea SMS yenye link ya cheti chako.", "output_format": "mp3"}' \5 --output swahili.mp3FAQ
Yes. The playground on this page reads up to 220 characters of Swahili at a time with no account. Sign up free for 10,000 characters and one voice clone, no card; after that it costs $0.03125 per 1,000 characters.
Yes, after free sign-up. The playground on this page plays audio in your browser only, up to 220 characters at a time, so you can check the voice first. Sign up free (10,000 characters and one voice clone, no card): the dashboard saves each clip as a WAV file with Download audio, and the API returns MP3 when you set "output_format": "mp3".
It reads whatever you write. Write saa nne asubuhi for 10 a.m. in Swahili time, and the listener hears it exactly as written.
Yes. Code-mixed text such as English words inside Swahili sentences is read in one voice, without switching accent.
Liz reads these samples; any Sonex Labs voice can speak Swahili, and you can clone a native speaker's voice from 10 seconds.
$0.03125 per 1,000 characters, the same as every language. The first 10,000 characters and one voice clone are free, with no card.
Yes. Audio you generate, on the free tier or with paid credits, can be used on monetised YouTube channels, Shorts, Reels and in ads, with no attribution. YouTube limits mass-produced, repetitive videos, not AI voices, so write your own script and keep your edits original. The monetisation decision is YouTube's.
The audio you generate is yours to use, including commercially, with no attribution and no royalties to Sonex Labs. You are responsible for the script itself: if you read someone else's text, you need their permission.
Yes. A Sonex voice clone is not tied to the language it was recorded in. Type a Swahili script and your clone reads it in your own voice, with Swahili pronunciation. Your natural accent carries over, so it sounds like you speaking Swahili.
More languages
See text to speech in every language, the full list of 250+ languages, pricing, the Pāṇini TTS API, or transcribe Swahili audio with Valmiki speech to text.
10,000 free text-to-speech characters and one free voice clone that speaks every language, no card required. Every language is billed at the same rate.