Show DEV: I built a free, no-signup tool that turns audio and video into text

Nadia Kessler — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:31:28 +0000

I'm Nadia, and I built MP3toText, a browser-based tool that turns
audio and video files into text. No install, no account, drop a file in and read the
transcript. I maintain it myself as a solo/indie project, so take this as a maker post, not
a neutral review.

Why I built it

I kept ending up with hour-long interview and meeting recordings that I needed as text, and
every option I tried had friction I didn't want: pay up front, create an account before you
can see if it even works, or install a desktop app to convert one file. I wanted the
opposite — open a tab, drop the file, get a transcript back.

What it actually does

Converts MP3, M4A, WAV, AAC, FLAC and OGG audio, plus MP4, MOV, MKV and WEBM video (the audio track is pulled out and transcribed).
Labels different speakers separately, so a two-person interview comes back split by voice instead of one unbroken block.
Timestamps every line, and the timestamps survive export to SRT/VTT if you want subtitles instead of plain text.
Auto-detects the spoken language across 90+ languages — you don't pick one manually.
Files up to 2GB / 4 hours are accepted; a one-hour recording is usually done in a few minutes.
No account: 4 hours of audio free per day, up to 10 hours total, daily allowance resets at 00:00 UTC.

A concrete example

I record a lot of user interviews for MP3toText itself (yes, the tool eats its own dog
food). A 45-minute call goes in as an MP3, comes back a few minutes later as a
speaker-labeled transcript with timestamps. I search it with Ctrl+F for the moment someone
mentioned a bug, jump to that timestamp in the recording to confirm the context, and paste
the relevant lines into a ticket. That loop used to mean replaying the whole call at 1.5x
speed with a notepad open.

What it doesn't do

Being upfront about the limits, since a maker post that only lists wins isn't useful:

Accuracy is around 99% on clear speech, but accents, background noise, and people talking over each other bring that down — same as any speech-to-text tool, this one included.
There's no API, no browser extension, and no mobile app. It's a website; it works in a mobile browser, but that's it.
Files and transcripts are deleted 24 hours after upload. If you need to keep something longer, export it before then.
It doesn't publish a paid tier. Right now it's just the free daily/total allowance above — I'm not going to promise pricing that doesn't exist yet.

Where it's useful

Journalists, students, researchers, podcasters, and support teams doing recording triage —
basically anyone with more recorded audio than time to re-listen to it. Meeting notes,
podcast prep, lecture review, and voice-memo cleanup are the cases I hear about most from
people using it.