Audio & Video to Text - Whisper Transcription API

Transcribe video and audio file URLs (mp4, webm, mov, mp3, wav, m4a, ogg, flac) or podcast RSS feeds to text, SRT and VTT subtitles with OpenAI Whisper. Paste a link, get the transcript, timestamped segments and duration back through the Apify API, no OpenAI key needed. $0.006 per audio minute, first 2 minutes of every run free, failed files never charged.

Quick start, transcribe an mp4 (video to text):

{ "urls": ["https://example.com/interview.mp4"], "outputFormats": ["text", "srt"] }

Turn podcast RSS feeds and audio or video file URLs into text, SRT and VTT subtitles. You give direct links to mp3, wav, m4a, ogg, flac, mp4, webm or mov files. You get the full transcript, timestamped segments and the duration for each file. The speech model (OpenAI Whisper, run locally inside the Actor) needs no API key and no third-party service.

Video to text: link an mp4, webm or mov file and the Actor extracts the audio track with ffmpeg and transcribes it. Billing is per audio minute, same as audio. A video with no audio track returns an error row and is not charged.

Not supported: YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok or other page links. Link the media file itself. For podcasts, paste the podcast's RSS/Atom feed URL into feedUrl and the newest episodes are found and transcribed for you.

Example output

Real result of a local run on the 3-second sample clip https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/En-uk-hello-6.ogg (the default input of this Actor):

{ "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/En-uk-hello-6.ogg", "status": "ok", "durationSeconds": 2.97, "text": "Hello", "srtUrl": "(key-value store link, when outputFormats includes srt)" }

Full field list and a longer example are under Output below.

Input

Field	Meaning
feedUrl	Podcast RSS/Atom feed URL. The newest maxEpisodes episodes with an audio enclosure are transcribed (one row per episode).
maxEpisodes	Episodes to take from the feed (default 3, max 50).
podcastName / podcastUrl	No feed URL? Give a show name (e.g. Planet Money) or a podcasts.apple.com link; the Actor finds the RSS feed through Apple's public directory and transcribes the newest maxEpisodes. Ignored if feedUrl is set. Only shows with a public RSS feed are found.
urls	Direct http(s) links to media files. Provide feedUrl, urls or both.
audioUrls, audioUrl, url	Aliases of urls (array, single string, single string) so inputs written for other transcriber actors work unchanged. Merged with urls.
language	auto (default, the model detects it) or a language code such as en, es, de.
model	base (default, more accurate) or tiny (about 1.5x faster). Same price.
outputFormats	text (default). Add srt and/or vtt to also get subtitle files.
maxMinutesPerFile	Skip files longer than this (default 60, max 120). Skipped files are not charged.
maxCostUsd	Optional spending cap. A file that would exceed it is skipped and the run stops.

Podcasters and editors: transcribe the latest episodes from an RSS feed

Paste your show's (or any public podcast's) RSS feed URL and the newest episodes are transcribed, one row per episode. Use it for show notes, searchable archives, quote pulling, SEO pages and subtitle files for editors. Example input (NPR's Planet Money feed, newest 1 episode):

{ "feedUrl": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml", "maxEpisodes": 1, "outputFormats": ["text", "srt"] }

Each episode row has episodeTitle, pubDate, audioUrl and transcript (the same text as text), plus feedTitle, segments and durationSeconds. Pricing: $0.006 per audio minute, first 2 minutes of every run free.

Output

One dataset row per file or podcast episode. Episodes from a feed also carry feedTitle, title (also as episodeTitle), pubDate (ISO), audioUrl and transcript (same as text):

{
  "url": "https://example.com/talk.mp3",
  "status": "ok",
  "language": "auto-detected",
  "durationSeconds": 133.23,
  "task": "transcribe",
  "wordCount": 312,
  "minutesBilled": 1,
  "billedMinutes": 1,
  "text": "Four score and seven years ago ...",
  "segments": [{ "start": 0, "end": 7, "text": "This is a LibriVox recording." }]
}

minutesBilled is the number of minutes charged for that file (after the 2 free minutes per run), so minutesBilled times the per-minute price is the charge. wordCount is the number of words in text.

Set task: "translate" to get English text from speech in another language (set language to the spoken language for best results). Set wordTimestamps: true to add words: [{word, start, end}] to every row.

With outputFormats: ["text", "srt", "vtt"], each transcribed file also gets subtitle files built from the segment timestamps (SRT uses HH:MM:SS,mmm, VTT uses HH:MM:SS.mmm). They are saved in the run's key-value store (file-000.srt, file-000.vtt, ...) and the row gets srtUrl and vttUrl links. No extra charge.

Failed files (status: "error", with the error) and skipped files (status: "skipped") are in the dataset too and are never charged. A SUMMARY record in the key-value store lists files, minutes billed and cost.

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price
audio-minute: one minute of audio successfully transcribed (rounded up per file, minimum 1)	$0.006

The first 2 audio minutes of every run are free (per run, not per user). Example: a 10-minute file as the first file of a run bills 8 minutes, $0.048. A 60-minute episode bills 58 minutes, about $0.35. Apify's standard platform usage rules apply on top of the event price as shown in the Console. Charges happen only after the transcript is saved.

Switching from media-transcriber, audio-video-to-text or mp3-to-text

Drop-in compatible with lergassy/mp3-to-text input: translateToEnglish is the same as task: translate, subtitleFormat (srt, vtt, both) adds subtitle files, and quality, diarize, chunkForRag and the other fields are accepted and ignored (no speaker labels or RAG chunks here).

Price: $0.006 per audio minute (first 2 minutes of every run free, failed files free), and this Actor accepts the same input fields, so you can paste your existing input unchanged. Accepted aliases: mediaUrls (array) and source_url (string) are merged into urls; rssFeedUrls (first feed) maps to feedUrl; maxEpisodesPerFeed to maxEpisodes; maxDurationMinutes to maxMinutesPerFile (capped at 120); translate: true is the same as task: translate; outputFormats may list segments, markdown or rag (segments are always returned, the other two are ignored). model values small and medium are accepted but run base here (only base and tiny exist). includeSubtitles: true (tidydata/audio-video-transcription) adds an SRT file, and its urls, language, maxEpisodes and maxMinutesPerFile fields have the same names here. Other fields of those Actors (monitor, RAG chunks, downloads, proxy and so on) are not implemented and are ignored.

{ "mediaUrls": ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/En-uk-hello-6.ogg"], "model": "base", "language": "en" }

Price comparison, as listed on the Apify Store on 2026-10-21 (prices from the public Store API pricingInfos: ours, sauliusautomatesit/media-transcriber, donjuan_mime/audio-video-to-text). Cost of one hour of audio, Free plan, before Apify platform usage:

One hour of audio	pennydata/audio-transcriber	media-transcriber "Basic"
Until 2026-10-24 20:10 UTC	$0.348 ($0.006/min, first 2 min of a run free)	$0.60 ($0.01/min)
From 2026-10-24 20:10 UTC	$0.348	$1.20 ($0.02/min)
1,000 hours (as 1,000 one-hour runs), from 2026-10-24	about $348	$1,200

The rival also charges $0.00005 per run start; its Quality and Max tiers (small and medium models) are $0.04 and $0.08 per minute from 2026-10-24, and this Actor has no equivalent larger model. donjuan_mime/audio-video-to-text is free today ($0.00001 per result) and from 2026-11-01 11:30 UTC costs $0.01 per result, which is per file, not per minute: it is cheaper than this Actor for files longer than about 1.7 minutes (and the first 2 minutes of a run are free here), and this Actor is cheaper for clips shorter than that, so pick on features (this one adds SRT/VTT output, RSS feeds and per-file skip and cost caps) rather than price alone.

Dated price changes of the actors you may be switching from (public Store API pricingInfos, read 2026-10-22)

Date (UTC)	Actor	Price per audio minute (Free plan)
2026-10-24 20:10	sauliusautomatesit/media-transcriber	Basic $0.01 -> $0.02 (Quality $0.04, Max $0.08)
2026-11-01 11:30	donjuan_mime/audio-video-to-text	$0.00001 -> $0.01 per result (per file)
2026-11-05 00:00	tidydata/audio-video-transcription	$0.003 -> $0.005
today	pennydata/audio-transcriber (this Actor)	$0.006

After 2026-11-05 tidydata/audio-video-transcription ($0.005 per minute) is cheaper than this Actor ($0.006) per minute; this Actor adds podcast RSS feeds, a per-run free allowance of 2 minutes, and a cost cap (maxCostUsd). Not affiliated with any of these authors.

Accuracy and speed (measured)

Whisper base on a 2-minute 13-second public-domain recording: 33 seconds on a 14-core PC, about 4x faster than real time. Expect slower on small Apify memory sizes: pick 4096 MB or more. The 2-minute test transcript was correct except for one rare word; background noise, heavy accents and music reduce accuracy as with any speech model. Segment timestamps are from the model and can be off by a second or two. Tiny is less accurate than base.

Limits

Files up to 1.5 GB and 120 minutes. Private network addresses are blocked. Speaker labels (diarization) are not provided.

Related actors

• Video Frame Extractor: pulls still frames from the same video you transcribe the audio of.
• Shot PDF: turns web pages into screenshots or PDFs, handy next to transcripts for archiving.
• RSS/Atom Feed Reader (bulk): collect podcast feed entries to feed into transcription.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Call this actor from an AI agent (Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client) through the Apify MCP server. Add this URL as an MCP server in your client: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=pennydata/audio-transcriber It exposes this actor as a tool the agent can run with the same input as above. An Apify API token is required. This actor was built with AI assistance.

Built with AI help (Claude).