# Fish Audio

> **TL;DR.** Fish Audio is a voice AI platform from [Hanabi AI](https://fish.

- **Category:** AI / Voice & Audio / Synthesis
- **Stage:** established
- **Age:** 801 days
- **Origin date:** 2024-05-13
- **First detected:** 2026-07-02
- **Canonical URL:** https://earlyterms.com/term/fish-audio
- **Sources:** 8 primary URLs

## Definition

Fish Audio is a voice AI platform from [Hanabi AI](https://fish.audio) that turns text into expressive, emotion-tagged speech and clones a voice from a 10-second sample. Built on the open-source Fish-Speech research line, it markets itself as a faster, dramatically cheaper alternative to ElevenLabs for developers and creators.

The platform crystallized around two model launches: OpenAudio S1 debuted in June 2025, undercutting ElevenLabs pricing 6x while topping the TTS-Arena leaderboard and pushing Hanabi AI's ARR past $5 million, and [Fish Audio S2](https://fish.audio/blog/fish-audio-open-sources-s2/) shipped March 10, 2026 as a fully open-sourced, sub-150ms dual-autoregressive model with inline emotion tags.

## Analogy

Think of Fish Audio as an open-source engine bolted onto ElevenLabs' business model — same voice quality, a fraction of the price.

## Why it's emerging now

Fish Audio open-sourced its S2 model on March 10, 2026 — a sub-150ms, dual-autoregressive TTS system Hanabi AI positions as a free alternative to ElevenLabs, building on S1's 2025 debut that already drove roughly $5M ARR and 20,000 developers at 6x lower prices.

## Related terms

- *competitor:* ElevenLabs
- *alias:* Fish-Speech
- *child:* OpenAudio S1
- *child:* Fish Audio S2
- *related:* Hanabi AI
- *parent:* text-to-speech
- *related:* voice cloning
- *related:* zero-shot voice cloning
- *competitor:* KugelAudio
- *competitor:* CosyVoice
- *competitor:* Cartesia
- *competitor:* Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS

## Sources

1. [Fish Audio — official site](https://fish.audio/)
2. [Fish Audio Blog: Open-Sourcing S2](https://fish.audio/blog/fish-audio-open-sources-s2/)
3. [Fish Audio S2 product page](https://fish.audio/s2/)
4. [MarkTechPost: Fish Audio S2 launch coverage](https://www.marktechpost.com/2026/03/10/fish-audio-releases-fish-audio-s2-a-new-generation-of-expressive-text-to-speech-tts-with-absurdly-controllable-emotion/)
5. [StartupHub.ai: Fish Audio S1 vs ElevenLabs](https://www.startuphub.ai/ai-news/ai-research/2025/fish-audio-s1-claims-best-ai-voice-challenges-elevenlabs-dominance)
6. [fishaudio/fish-speech (GitHub, 31.3k stars)](https://github.com/fishaudio/fish-speech)
7. [TextToLab: Fish Audio pricing breakdown](https://texttolab.com/blog/fish-audio-pricing)
8. [Hacker News: Ask HN — What's KugelAudio's (YC P26) Moat?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48358446)

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_Generated by EarlyTerms · https://earlyterms.com/term/fish-audio_