Why languages have tiers: core, beta and coming soon — and what the difference is
If you have ever visited our languages page or the voice catalog, you have seen the labels next to each language: some are marked as core, some as beta, and others as coming soon. This is not marketing and not an accident — behind each tier there is a real difference in how the synthesis sounds. Let us explain honestly what each tier means and why we introduced them at HancVoice in the first place.
In short: a tier is honesty about quality
The synthesis engine handles different languages with different levels of skill. It would be dishonest to present a language that sounds flawless and a language that is still being refined in exactly the same way — you might pick the second one and be disappointed. A tier is a maturity label: it tells you in advance what to expect.
Core tier — a quality guarantee
This is the heart of the engine: languages it knows natively and pronounces cleanly, with stable intonation. There are ten of them today — German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In these languages the synthesis is predictably smooth, and we stand behind it. Most voices in the catalog live here.
Beta — it works, but we are still polishing
The engine synthesizes beta languages — for example Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch, Czech, Greek or Finnish — through auto mode: it detects the language from the text on its own and reads it with the closest tools available. The language already sounds and you can use it, but we do not guarantee the quality yet — the pronunciation may drift a little here, the intonation may be imperfect there. It is an honest “it works, but we are still refining it”. Voices in these languages carry a “Beta” badge in the catalog.
Beta does not mean “broken”. It is a language that already speaks, but that we have not yet given our seal of quality. Some beta languages are closer to the ideal than others — so listen to the demos.
Coming soon — a language in development
These are languages whose synthesis we are still preparing: selecting speakers, tuning pronunciation. For now it is switched off — you see the language in the list (so you know it is in the works), but you cannot generate speech in it yet. As soon as it sounds stable, we will move it to beta, and then to the core tier.
How a language graduates from beta to core
Not on a schedule — on quality. A language graduates from beta when it consistently passes the same quality control as the core languages: clean sound without noise or artifacts, steady intonation. Until it does, it stays in beta, however long that takes. We would rather keep a language in beta longer than pass off a raw result as guaranteed.
Why we work on so many languages
Because we do not just voice text — we develop languages. Every new language in beta is proof of living R&D, not a ready-made storefront. You can see which languages are currently in the works — and vote for the ones you need — in our Lab.
What this means for you in practice
- You need a guaranteed result — pick a core language.
- You are curious to try a rarer language — pick a beta one, but listen to the voice demo first.
- You are waiting for a specific language — check the coming-soon tier and vote for it in the Lab.
Bottom line
Tiers are our way of being honest with you: we do not pass off the unfinished as ready, and we do not hide what already works. Core is a guarantee, beta works and is being polished, coming soon is on its way. Browse all languages by tier and pick the one that fits your task.
Try it yourself — a free starter character pack when you sign up.
