MP3 to Text Transcription

MP3 is the format most recordings end up in. Podcast episodes are published as MP3, many voice recorders and dictation apps save it, lecture recordings are often shared that way, and interviews recorded on a phone are frequently exported as MP3 to keep them small. Getting the words out of those files by hand takes far longer than the recording itself.

Transcription does that work for you. The speech is recognized and written out as text, with punctuation and capital letters added so it reads like sentences rather than a stream of words. A timestamp in front of each paragraph shows where it starts in the recording, which makes checking quotes and names quick.

The result is a plain .txt file. It opens on any device, pastes into a document, an email or a notes app, and can be searched for a word or a name instantly.

The list below shows every file type the transcriber accepts and every output it can write. MP3 is the most common input, but WAV, M4A and video files such as MP4 work on the same page, so you do not need to convert a recording to MP3 first. For other formats in depth, see Audio to Text.

The two formats have nothing in common technically. MP3, standardized as part of ISO/IEC 11172-3, stores compressed sound. A text file stores characters. Transcription bridges the two by recognizing speech, which is why the quality of the recording matters more than anything else.

MP3 compression itself is rarely the problem: at the bit rates used for speech and podcasts, voices stay clear. Background music, several people talking at once, a distant microphone or a noisy room cause far more recognition errors than the format does.

Plain text is the preset output, with timestamps and punctuation switched on and the language set to auto-detect. That suits interviews, lectures and meetings, where you want readable paragraphs and a way back to the audio. Every option can be changed before you convert, and the expandable notes below explain the ones people ask about most.

Other outputs are available from the same upload: a Word document for editing, a PDF for sharing, SRT or VTT subtitles with timings, or JSON with word-level timings for developers.

Choose the Word output if several people will edit the transcript, and the PDF output if it is final and should not be changed.

The best transcript starts with the best recording you have. Use the original file rather than a copy that was compressed again for sharing, and cut long silent stretches or music intros if they are not needed. For a recording that is part of a video, Video to Audio extracts the soundtrack as MP3 first, though this page also accepts MP4 and other video files directly.

Read the transcript once with the audio at hand. Names, technical terms and numbers are the words most likely to need correcting, and the timestamps take you straight to each spot.

You can transcribe up to 20 files per batch, each up to 95 MB. Uploads are deleted after processing and the transcripts 30 minutes later, so download them before you close the page. No account is needed.