How to use Audio to Text
- Choose an audio or video file, or record with your microphone.
- Pick the language, or let it be detected, and a model: Fast, More accurate for Arabic and noisy recordings, or Best for Urdu on a computer.
- The first time, the speech model downloads once. Then the text appears as the recording is transcribed.
- Click a time to hear that part, then copy the text or download it as TXT, or as SRT or VTT subtitles.
Why use Audio to Text
Private by design
Whisper runs in your browser, so meetings, interviews and voice notes never leave your device. No sign-up and no minutes limit.
99 languages
English, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, French, Spanish and 93 more, detected for you. It can also translate any of them into English.
SRT subtitle generator
Download SRT or VTT subtitles with times, ready for YouTube, CapCut, Premiere or VLC.
Record or upload
Record a meeting or a lecture here, or choose MP3, M4A, WAV, OGG, WhatsApp voice notes, MP4 and other videos.
Works offline
After the first download the speech model is kept in this browser, so transcription keeps working without a connection.
Meeting summary
In Chrome with its built-in AI, get the main points of a meeting, written on your device too.
About this tool
This audio to text converter runs OpenAI's Whisper speech recognition in your browser. Fast (Whisper base) suits clear speech and phones. More accurate (Whisper small) is much better with accents, background noise and Arabic. Best (Whisper large-v3-turbo, computers only) is the one for Urdu: on our test of 80 Urdu recordings it got 85% of words right, against 74% for More accurate, but it is a large download and slower. On a recent computer, Fast usually needs less time than the recording lasts; a phone is slower, so keep the page open while it works.
Whisper is very good with English and good with Arabic, but less accurate with Urdu, so check names, numbers and technical words before you use the text. For the best results, record one speaker close to the microphone with little noise around, and choose the language yourself for short clips.
Your file is decoded by your own browser and transcribed on your device: nothing is uploaded, and there is no account or limit. Only the speech model is downloaded, once, from this site.
Frequently asked questions
Is it free, with no limit?
Yes. There is no sign-up and no minutes limit, because the transcription runs on your device, not on our servers. Long recordings simply take longer; on phones, recordings over an hour may run out of memory.
Is my recording uploaded?
No. The file is read and transcribed in your browser. Only the speech model is downloaded, once, from this site.
Which model should I choose?
Fast (68 MB) for clear English and on phones. More accurate (184 MB) for Arabic, strong accents, several speakers or background noise. Best (623 MB, computers with 8 GB of memory or more) for Urdu: it makes about half the mistakes of More accurate, but is the slowest.
How accurate is it with Urdu and Arabic?
Arabic is good with the More accurate model. For Urdu, use Best on a computer: on our test of 80 Urdu recordings it wrote 95% of the letters right (More accurate: 90%). Still read the text through before you use it.
Why did my Urdu come out in Hindi script?
Spoken Urdu and Hindi sound the same, so a speech model can write either. This page picks the script from your device (your last choice here, your browser's languages or your time zone) and keeps the whole transcript in that one script. If it is the wrong one, tap "Write it in Urdu" (or Hindi) above the transcript.
Can it make subtitles?
Yes. Download SRT or VTT subtitles with a time for each line, then upload them to YouTube or open them in your video editor or player.
Can it translate?
Tick "Translate it into English" and speech in any of its languages is written out in English.
Which files work?
Anything your browser can play: MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, OGG and OPUS (WhatsApp voice notes), FLAC, WebM, and the sound of MP4, MOV and other videos.
Can it tell the speakers apart?
Not yet. The transcript is one text, with the time of each line.
Is this audio to text converter free online?
Yes. It is free online with no sign-up and no minute limit. The speech model runs in your browser, so the recording is never uploaded.