Audio & Video Transcriber (Whisper): MP3, MP4, Podcasts to Text

What does Audio & Video Transcriber do?

Transcribe audio and video files and podcast episodes to text, SRT and VTT subtitles with OpenAI Whisper — no API key, pay per audio minute. Give it direct links to MP3, M4A, WAV, MP4, MOV or WEBM files, or a podcast RSS feed, and it returns the full transcript, timestamped segments, the detected language and ready-to-use subtitle files.

Whisper runs inside your Apify run, so your files are never sent to a third-party speech API. Because it runs on the Apify platform, you also get API access, scheduling, webhooks, integrations (Make, Zapier, n8n, LangChain) and run monitoring out of the box, and AI agents can call it through the Apify MCP server.

Why use Audio & Video Transcriber?

• No API keys or accounts. Paste a link and click Start.
• Text, segments and subtitles in one run. Plain text for search and AI, timestamps for editing, SRT and VTT files for video players.
• Podcast feeds built in. Add an RSS feed and the newest episodes are transcribed automatically; schedule it to transcribe new episodes as they come out.
• Private by design. Files are processed inside your run and deleted afterwards. Nothing is sent to third-party APIs.
• Fair billing. You pay per started minute of audio that was transcribed. Broken links, web pages, silent files and files over your limits are never charged.
• ~99 languages, with automatic language detection and an option to translate speech into English.

Typical uses: meeting and interview notes, podcast show notes and SEO pages, subtitles for videos, searchable archives of lectures and webinars, and feeding spoken content into RAG pipelines and AI agents.

How to transcribe audio and video to text

1. Click Try for free.
2. Paste direct file links into Audio and video file links, or add a Podcast RSS feed.
3. Optionally choose the Language (automatic by default) and whether to translate to English.
4. Click Start. The status line shows progress, for example "Transcribing 2/5: episode.mp3 — 12:30 of 45:00".
5. Open the Output tab: Overview lists every file with its duration, billed minutes and subtitle link; Transcript shows the text.

Input

Field	Description	Default
Audio and video file links	Direct links to MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, OGG, OPUS, AAC, MP4, M4V, MOV, WEBM or MKV files. Dropbox and Google Drive share links are converted automatically.	–
Podcast RSS feeds	Feed links; the newest episodes are transcribed.	–
Episodes per feed	1–50	3
Language	Automatic detection, or one of 25 common languages. Whisper recognizes about 99 languages in automatic mode.	automatic
Task	Transcribe in the original language, or translate to English	transcribe
Include timestamped segments	Phrases with start and end times in seconds	on
Create SRT and VTT subtitle files	Saved to the run's key-value store and linked in the output	on
Maximum minutes per file	Longer files are skipped and not charged	240
Maximum file size (MB)	Larger files are skipped and not charged	1024

Example input:

{
  "mediaUrls": [
    { "url": "https://archive.org/download/newhampshire_1902_librivox/newhampshire_13_frost_64kb.mp3" }
  ],
  "podcastFeeds": ["https://www.nasa.gov/feeds/podcasts/small-steps-giant-leaps"],
  "maxEpisodesPerFeed": 1
}

Output

Each file becomes one item in the dataset. A real example from a run on 14 September 2026 (text and segments shortened):

{
  "url": "https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NATIONALAERONAUTICSANDSPACEADMINISTRATION1980847908.mp3",
  "source": "podcast",
  "title": "Passing Down Knowledge",
  "podcast": "Small Steps, Giant Leaps",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-02T14:11:00+00:00",
  "status": "success",
  "language": "en",
  "languageProbability": 0.998,
  "task": "transcribe",
  "durationSeconds": 996.3,
  "billedMinutes": 17,
  "text": "When I learned that it was okay to not know everything, that it's okay to ask questions and ask for understanding, allow myself to be mentored, that's when opportunities presented themselves...",
  "wordCount": 2792,
  "segments": [
    { "start": 0.46, "end": 4.36, "text": "When I learned that it was okay to not know everything," },
    { "start": 4.36, "end": 6.1, "text": "that it's okay to ask questions" }
  ],
  "srtUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/.../records/002-NATIONALAERONAUTICSANDSPACEADMINISTRATION1980847908.srt",
  "vttUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/.../records/002-NATIONALAERONAUTICSANDSPACEADMINISTRATION1980847908.vtt",
  "model": "whisper-small",
  "processingSeconds": 288.9
}

A file that cannot be transcribed is still listed, with "status": "failed", "billedMinutes": 0 and a plain-language error, for example "This is a web page, not a media file. Use a direct link to the audio or video file."

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Output fields

Field	Meaning
url, source, title, fileName	The link, file or podcast, the episode title or file name
podcast, feedUrl, publishedAt	Podcast name, feed and episode date (podcast items only)
status, error	success, failed or truncated (stopped at your maximum cost per run)
language, languageProbability, task	Detected or chosen language, detection confidence, transcribe or translate
durationSeconds, billedMinutes	Media length and the minutes charged
text, wordCount	Full transcript
segments	[{start, end, text}] in seconds
srtUrl, vttUrl	Subtitle files
model, processingSeconds, processedAt	Engine and timing

How much does it cost to transcribe audio?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing: you pay per started minute of audio that was transcribed (a 2 minute 1 second file is 3 minutes). Platform compute is included in the price. Failed downloads, web pages, files without speech and files over your limits cost nothing. See the Pricing tab for the current price per minute. You can set a maximum cost per run: the Actor transcribes only as many minutes as your budget allows and marks the last file as truncated.

Tips

• Speed: at the default 8 GB of memory, transcription runs about 3× faster than real time (a 17-minute episode took under 5 minutes). More memory gives more CPU and finishes sooner; files are processed one after another.
• Use direct file links. A link that opens a player page returns HTML, not audio. On podcast hosting sites, copy the episode's download link or use the RSS feed.
• Set the language for short clips or heavy accents if automatic detection picks the wrong one.
• Long recordings: files over 2 hours need at least 4 GB of memory.
• New episodes on a schedule: run daily with Episodes per feed set to 1.

What is not supported

• YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, Instagram, Vimeo, SoundCloud and other platform pages. Their terms do not allow downloading, so this Actor only accepts direct links to files you have the right to use.
• Speaker identification (who said what) is not included yet. Tell us in the Issues tab if you need it.
• Password-protected or login-only links.

Related tools

Combine with these tools for content and AI pipelines:

• PDF Text Extractor & Document to Markdown: convert PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel files (including scans) to Markdown for AI pipelines.
• RSS Feed Reader & Finder: read RSS, Atom and JSON feeds or find the feed of any website.

FAQ and support

Which model is used? Whisper "small" by OpenAI (MIT licence), running through faster-whisper on CPU. Accuracy is best for major languages with clear audio.

Is my data stored? Files are downloaded into your run, transcribed and deleted. Transcripts and subtitles are saved only to your own Apify storage.

Can I transcribe any recording? You must have the right to transcribe the content you submit, for example your own recordings, public-domain material or content you are licensed to use.

Something went wrong? Open an issue in the Issues tab with the link (if it is public) and what you expected. Custom transcription pipelines are available on request.