Search for free transcription and you will find fifty tools that all say the same word. The word means completely different things: 3 files a day, or 120 minutes a month you can only spend 3 minutes at a time, or 3 uploads for the rest of your life, or a trial that asks for a card on file before the first upload.
So this list leads with the cap. For every tool below you get what the free version actually hands you, and the exact point where it stops. Caps checked August 2026.
Full disclosure: we make Braindump, so we are not neutral. But a dishonest list helps nobody, so our own limits are stated as plainly as everyone else’s, and several tools here beat us at specific jobs.
The four ways “free” ends
Before the list, the patterns worth recognising on any pricing page:
- A monthly minute pool. Fine until you transcribe two long meetings and the month is gone.
- A per-file cap. The killer. A tool can advertise 120 free minutes a month and still refuse a 4-minute recording.
- A lifetime cap. Some tools give you a small number of file uploads ever, not per month.
- The card wall. The tool is free, but you cannot reach it without saving a payment method first.
1. Braindump - 3 free transcriptions every day, plus what to do with them
Braindump runs in the browser. Sign in with Google or Apple (one click, no forms), drop in audio or video, pick the spoken language, and you get back a clean transcript, split into paragraphs (or into labelled speaker turns when two or more people talk), with a title and a short summary.
- What free gets you: 3 transcriptions every day, renewed daily, no credit card. Files up to 2 hours and 250 MB, in 59 languages including Arabic dialects. Speaker labels are included: each turn is marked Speaker 1, Speaker 2 with its start time, and you can rename them. Audio and video both work (mp3, m4a, wav, aac, opus, mp4, mov and more).
- Best at: recordings you need to skim rather than read end to end. The title and summary are the part most free tools do not have, and they are the difference between a wall of text and something useful.
- Where free stops: recordings over 30 minutes are transcribed in full but shown as a preview - the complete text and the summary unlock on the paid plan. Under 30 minutes is fully free, three times a day, forever. There is also a mobile app (iOS and Android) if you would rather record straight into it.
2. TurboScribe - the other honest 3-a-day free tier
TurboScribe gives you 3 files per day, each up to 30 minutes, with no credit card. It is built on the Whisper model family, exports cleanly to TXT, DOCX, SRT and PDF, and does not watermark free output.
- Best at: straightforward file-to-text conversion with proper subtitle exports. If you want SRT files for video, this is the more natural fit.
- Where free stops: 30 minutes per file, hard. Unused daily files do not roll over.
3. Otter.ai - free for live meetings, barely free for files
Otter’s free plan is 300 minutes a month with a 30-minute limit per conversation. The catch that surprises people: the free plan allows only 3 file imports total, ever. Otter is built to sit in your Zoom, Meet or Teams call and transcribe live, not to convert the recordings sitting on your laptop.
- Best at: live meeting capture with speaker labels, which it does better than almost anyone.
- Where free stops: the lifetime import cap makes it a poor free audio-to-text converter. Use it for meetings as they happen, not for your archive.
4. Notta - generous on paper, tiny in practice
Notta’s free plan advertises 120 minutes a month. The number that matters more: each individual recording is capped at 3 minutes.
- Best at: very short clips, and a clean interface.
- Where free stops: almost immediately. A voice message might fit. A lecture, an interview, or a meeting will not.
5. Descript - free tier of an editing studio
Descript’s free plan includes 1 hour of transcription a month across 23 languages, plus its editor, which lets you cut audio and video by deleting words from the transcript.
- Best at: podcast and video editing where the transcript is the timeline. Nothing else here does that.
- Where free stops: 1 hour a month, and it is a full production app to learn, which is a lot of tool if all you wanted was text.
6. OpenAI Whisper, run locally - unlimited and genuinely private
Whisper is the open-source speech model much of this industry is built on, and you can run it on your own computer. No account, no upload, no cap, no cost. Your audio never leaves your machine, which makes this the strongest option for confidential recordings.
- Best at: unlimited volume, sensitive material, and anyone comfortable with a terminal.
- Where free stops: it does not, but it starts with a Python install and a model download, and a long file on a laptop CPU can take a while. Browser-based Whisper builds exist too, and they trade the install for a large one-time model download and slower processing.
7. Your phone - free, private, already in your pocket
Worth checking before installing anything:
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iPhone Voice Memos transcribes its own recordings on iPhone 12 or newer (introduced in iOS 18), free and on device, in roughly a dozen languages.
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WhatsApp voice message transcripts work on device once you switch them on in Settings, then Chats, then Voice message transcripts. Handy for the 90-second voice note a friend sent instead of texting.
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Google Recorder on Pixel phones transcribes as you record.
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Where free stops: these only handle their own recordings, the language lists are short compared with a dedicated tool, and you get raw text with no summary and awkward export.
8. YouTube auto-captions - the free workaround nobody advertises
Upload your recording as an unlisted video, wait for automatic captions to generate, then open the transcript and copy it out. Free, unlimited, no account beyond a Google one.
- Best at: long files at zero cost when you are not in a hurry.
- Where free stops: you have to turn audio into a video, wait for processing, and accept rough punctuation with no speaker labels. Uploading someone else’s recording to YouTube, even unlisted, is also a privacy decision worth thinking about.
9. Google Docs Voice Typing - free, but it cannot open your file
This one deserves a correction because it is recommended constantly. Voice Typing (Tools, then Voice typing, in Chrome) is free and unlimited, but it only listens to your microphone in real time. There is no upload path for an mp3. The workaround of playing the recording out loud into your mic loses accuracy fast on anything with background noise or two speakers.
- Best at: dictating something you are saying right now, for free, into a document you already use.
- Where free stops: at any file that already exists.
10. Microsoft Word Transcribe - not actually free
Word’s Transcribe tool does take uploaded files, but it requires an active Microsoft 365 subscription, and uploads are limited to around 300 minutes a month. Word’s dictation is free and live-only, like Google’s.
Side by side
| Tool | What free gets you | Where free stops |
|---|---|---|
| Braindump | 3 transcriptions/day, no card, title + summary, speaker labels, 59 languages | Over 30 min shows a preview; full text needs Pro |
| TurboScribe | 3 files/day, 30 min each, clean exports | 30 min per file, no rollover |
| Otter.ai | 300 min/month live meetings | Only 3 file imports ever |
| Notta | 120 min/month | 3 minutes per recording |
| Descript | 1 hour/month, 23 languages | 1 hour, and it is an editing suite |
| Whisper (local) | Unlimited, private, free | Python install and processing time |
| Phone built-ins | Free, on device | Own recordings only, few languages |
| YouTube captions | Unlimited, free | Video upload, rough output |
| Google Docs | Unlimited live dictation | Cannot transcribe a saved file |
| Word Transcribe | 300 min/month | Requires Microsoft 365 |
Picking one in thirty seconds
- A recording under 30 minutes, and you want the takeaways not just the text: Braindump, free, three a day.
- An interview with two or three people, and you need who said what: Braindump, speaker labels on the free plan.
- A 30-minute file and you want subtitles: TurboScribe.
- A meeting happening right now: Otter.
- Confidential audio that must not leave your laptop: Whisper, locally.
- A voice note on your phone: the phone itself, free.
- A three-hour recording and no budget at all: YouTube captions, and accept the rough edges.
- You want to dictate rather than transcribe: Google Docs Voice Typing.
The honest summary of this category: free tiers are marketing, and the marketing hides in the per-file cap. Read that number first and the rest of the pricing page mostly stops mattering.
Want to feel the difference between a transcript and a transcript that has already been read for you? Transcribe a file free in your browser - it takes about a minute, and no card is involved. If the file in question is a voice memo, we wrote the step-by-step for that in how to transcribe a voice memo to text, and students turning recordings into revision material should start with recorded lecture to study notes.