Transcribe interview audio to text free, accurate
Turn an interview recording into an accurate, quotable transcript: for journalism, research, hiring or content. Before you settle on one app, it's worth checking how the best free transcription tools actually compare on their daily and monthly limits.
Last updated: September 2026
Upload the audio or video and get the text back in minutes. No account, 10 recordings a day.
No account. 10 recordings a day. Files up to 60 minutes here, and it resets at midnight.
Plain transcript and subtitles right here. Bleeping, translation and burned-in subtitles live in the full tool.
For journalists, researchers and recruiters
Transcribing an interview by hand takes hours. ScribeGrab does it in minutes so you can pull exact quotes, code qualitative research, or review a candidate's answers as text. The transcript is yours to download as TXT.
Think of it as an interview transcript generator without the software: nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, just a transcript. Upload the recording and you get a transcript of an interview back as plain text, ready to quote from. It's interview transcription software in the sense that it does the job: just running in a browser tab instead of on your hard drive, so there's no transcribe interview app to download either.
- Exact, quotable text for articles and reports
- Qualitative research coding from clean transcripts
- Review candidate answers without re-listening
- A written record for your archive
Most interview transcribing software wants a subscription before you've even tried it. This one doesn't ask. Open it, upload the file, download the text.
How to transcribe an interview
- Record the interview (phone recorder, Zoom, a dedicated recorder, anything).
- Save it as MP3, M4A, WAV or a video file.
- Open ScribeGrab and upload it (up to 60 minutes / 1.5 GB).
- Download the transcript as TXT and proofread the quotes you'll use.
Accuracy and privacy
Clear one-on-one interviews transcribe very accurately; talking over each other is harder, so check those parts. Did the interview happen outside: a street vox pop, a doorstep or an on-location shoot? Wind roaring across the mic is one of the fastest ways to wreck a transcript, and CleanGrab's wind noise remover takes the edge off before you run it through here. Interviews are sensitive, so your file is deleted right after processing and wiped within 45 minutes (24 hours with any pass, free or paid), and nothing is shared. See privacy and accuracy.
Quotes you can stand behind
The reason journalists and researchers transcribe interviews isn't convenience, it's defensibility. A quote you can point to in the recording is a quote you can publish. A quote you half-remember is a liability, and no amount of AI accuracy changes that: the transcript is a working document, not evidence.
So verify before you quote. The click-to-play transcript on the results page makes this cheap: click any line and it plays that exact moment of the audio. Do it for every sentence that will appear between quotation marks, and do it especially for numbers, dates, names and anything negated. "We did not approve the budget" and "we did approve the budget" differ by one short word, and one short word is the kind of thing speech recognition drops when someone speaks quickly. Keep the SRT file too, because it carries a timestamp on every line: a quote with a timestamp beside it in your notes is one you can re-check months later without listening to the whole recording again.
The speaker labels are what make an interview transcript usable at all. ScribeGrab separates the voices automatically and marks them Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and so on, so an interviewer's question and the answer to it don't dissolve into one paragraph. Replace the labels with real names once, at the top, and the whole document becomes quotable. Two cautions worth taking seriously: labels are estimated from voice characteristics rather than from any participant list, so speakers with similar voices can be merged, and where two people talk over each other the line usually goes to whoever was louder. Both failures cluster at handoffs, which is exactly where an attributed quote goes wrong, so check the label at the start and end of anything you plan to use.
Consent, and what happens to the file
Recording law varies more than people expect and it isn't a technical question, so treat this as the practical shape of it rather than legal advice. In much of Europe, including the Netherlands, a participant in a conversation may generally record it, but publishing or sharing that recording is a separate matter and personal data rules still apply. Several US states require the consent of everyone on the call, not just one party. Professional codes often go further than the law: journalism and academic ethics boards typically require explicit, recorded consent regardless of jurisdiction.
Read more
The workable habit is simple and costs ten seconds: ask on the recording. Start by stating that you're recording, why, and what you'll do with it, and let the answer be part of the file. It settles the question permanently and it's the first thing any editor or ethics reviewer will look for. If the interview is remote, say it before the substance begins rather than at the end.
On our side, the handling is deliberately boring. Your upload is deleted the moment processing finishes, and the transcript and subtitle files are wiped from the server within 45 minutes (24 hours with any pass, free or paid), long enough to download them, short enough that there's nothing sitting around afterwards. There's no account, so there's no profile to attach an interview to and nothing to delete later, and nothing you upload is used to train anything. Transcription runs on our own GPU hardware, not through a third-party transcription API. For a sensitive interview that's the relevant detail, and the privacy policy spells out the retention in full.
Got the interview questions as a PDF instead of text? ScanReviver's PDF to Word converts it to an editable .docx first, so you can drop the answers straight in alongside the transcript.
By Sam Ridder, I build and run ScribeGrab on my own hardware, on my own. Who I am.
Frequently asked
How accurate is it for quotes?
Very accurate on clear speech, but always proofread a quote before you publish it, especially names, numbers and technical terms. On clear turns it does well; where two people speak at once, any speech model struggles.
Does it label who said what?
Yes. When it hears two to eight voices, it automatically splits the transcript into speaker turns, so the interviewer and the person answering get Speaker 1 / Speaker 2 style labels without switching anything on. Check the labels at handoffs before you attribute a quote.
How long can the interview be?
Up to 60 minutes and 1.5 GB per file, 10 recordings a day, and free interview transcription doesn't get shorter after the first one: the count resets at midnight. A longer interview needs splitting, or a €5 pass that takes files up to 4 hours.
Is my recording kept private?
Yes. The file is deleted right after processing; results are wiped within 45 minutes (24 hours with any pass, free or paid). There's no account to attach it to.
How to properly transcribe an interview?
Record clearly, ideally with the voice recorder or phone between the two of you rather than next to one speaker. Upload the file, then read the transcript back once, especially names and technical terms, and check every quote against the audio before you use it.
How to transcribe an interview online for free?
Upload the interview recording above as MP3, M4A, WAV or a video file, wait a couple of minutes, and download the full transcript as TXT. Going from interview to text this way needs no account and no card, so you can transcribe for free up to 10 recordings a day.
Related: Free AI Text to Speech: Type It, Hear It, Download the MP3.
What's the best way to record an interview before transcribing it?
One mic per person if you can, or a single phone placed between you both rather than near just one speaker. The model handles a bit of room noise fine, but two voices at very different volumes is what usually costs you a word or two.
What is a transcription of an interview?
It's the interview's speech written down as text, ideally with each speaker labelled and lined up to a timestamp so a quote can be checked against the original recording. By default it's just the words: it doesn't summarise, interpret, remove filler or do any paraphrasing.
How do I write an interview report or summary from it?
Start from the transcript, not your memory of the conversation: pull the exact quotes you'll use, group them by theme, and write the connecting text around them. A transcript with timestamps makes it easy to jump back and re-check anything before it goes in.
Is there a transcribing interviews app?
Not as a phone app to install: ScribeGrab is a website, so there's nothing in an app store. Opening the site in any browser, on a phone or a computer, does the same job as an interview transcription app.
Is this cheaper than paid interview transcription services?
It's free up to 60 minutes a file, where most paid transcription services charge per minute. Paid human services still make sense when you need a guaranteed, checked transcript for legal use.
Can I use it for qualitative research and thematic analysis?
Yes. The transcript is a close record of what was said, not a word-for-word guarantee, so check the quotes you will cite before coding, and the plain TXT drops straight into qualitative analysis software without reformatting. Plenty of students use it for university projects; proofread names and technical terms afterwards.
Can I get the transcript with timestamps?
Yes. SRT and VTT files with a timestamp on every line come free alongside the plain transcript, so each quote can be traced back to the second it was said.
Does it work on phone recordings, video calls and old recorders?
Yes. A phone voice memo, a Zoom or Teams video file, or a WAV or MP3 from an older handheld recorder all upload the same way as any audio file. You can AI transcribe a recording from any of them. For video, only the audio track is transcribed.
Which languages does it handle?
Around 100 languages, detected automatically, free either way. The transcript comes back in the language spoken.
Can I export to Word or PDF instead of plain text?
Free downloads are TXT, SRT and VTT; paste the TXT into Word or a PDF tool for that. A pass adds a Word (.docx) export directly.
How long does a one-hour interview take?
Roughly two minutes of processing per hour of audio, so you can work through several interviews in one sitting, one after another.
Can an audio to text AI handle two speakers talking in turn?
Yes. When the model hears two or more voices it adds speaker labels, so questions and answers come back as separate turns. Clean turn-taking transcribes well, while talking over each other is harder, so check those passages.
What should I do after I transcribe an interview?
Verify every quote against the audio before you publish it. Use the click-to-play transcript to jump to the exact moment, and fix names, numbers and the speaker labels, which are estimated from the voices.