Audio Transcription: MP3 & Video Files to Text, SRT, VTT

What does Audio Transcription do?

Audio Transcription turns audio and video files into text. Paste the URL of a file (MP3, MP4, M4A, WAV, OGG, WebM, FLAC, MOV and most other formats) or a public Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive share link, and get back the full transcript as plain text, SRT subtitles, WebVTT subtitles and timestamped JSON segments, plus the file name, length and detected language.

Not affiliated with Google, Dropbox, Microsoft or OpenAI. Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive are trademarks of their owners.

It is a speech to text API you don't have to host: the Actor downloads each file, converts the audio with ffmpeg, splits long recordings into 10-minute parts behind the scenes and runs Whisper AI speech recognition on them in about 100 languages. A 2-hour meeting comes back as one transcript with timestamps from 00:00 to the end.

File URLs, not shows. This Actor works from links to files. To transcribe the latest episodes of a podcast by its name, Apple Podcasts link or RSS feed (and monitor a show for new episodes), use our Podcast Transcription Actor. Both use the same speech engine and give the same transcript formats.

Why use an audio transcription tool?

• 🎙️ Meetings, interviews and calls: turn recordings in your Drive or Dropbox into searchable notes, quotes and minutes.
• 🎬 Subtitles: SRT and VTT files are ready for video editors, YouTube uploads and HTML5 players.
• 🤖 AI and RAG pipelines: timestamped JSON segments are easy to chunk, embed, summarise with an LLM and cite back to the exact second.
• 📚 Lectures, webinars and voice notes: get text you can read, translate or index.
• ⚙️ Automation: call it from your code, Make, Zapier or n8n whenever a new file lands in a folder, and get JSON back.

It runs on the Apify platform, so you also get an API, scheduling, webhooks and integrations with Make, Zapier, n8n, LangChain and LlamaIndex.

What data can it extract?

Field	Example
text	the whole transcript as one string
srt	the transcript as an SRT subtitle file
vtt	the transcript as a WebVTT subtitle file
segments	[{ "start": 12.4, "end": 17.9, "text": "..." }], times in seconds
language, wordCount	en, 540
durationSec, transcribedSec	length of the file and of the part transcribed
chargedMinutes, truncated	started minutes billed; true when only the first part was transcribed
fileName, source	interview.mp3, direct / google-drive / dropbox / onedrive / sharepoint
fileSizeBytes, contentType	from the file server
url	the link you gave
notice, error	why a file was cut or could not be processed (error rows are free)

How to transcribe an audio file from a URL

1. Open the Actor and click Try for free.
2. Paste one link per line into Audio or video URLs. For Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive, use the file's share link and set sharing to "Anyone with the link".
3. Optional: set Max minutes per file, pick the Output formats and set the Spoken language if you know it.
4. Click Start and wait. A one-hour file usually takes a few minutes.
5. Open the Output tab, or download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel.

How much does it cost?

You pay per started minute of audio transcribed: $6 per 1,000 audio minutes ($0.006 a minute, so a one-hour recording costs $0.36). All output formats are included at that price. There is no charge for files that fail to download, can't be read, have no audio track or contain no speech (music or silence), or for links that are not supported. On top of that, Apify charges a tiny start fee per run.

Free Apify plan: up to 30 audio minutes per run, because every minute of speech recognition costs us a fee. Any paid Apify plan removes that limit. The Max minutes per file setting and your run's maximum charge both cap what you can be billed.

Input

{
    "audioUrls": [
        "https://archive.org/download/gettysburg_address_librivox/gettysburg_address_lincoln_64kb.mp3",
        "https://drive.google.com/file/d/FILE_ID/view?usp=sharing",
        "https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/abc123/meeting.m4a?rlkey=xyz&dl=0"
    ],
    "maxMinutesPerFile": 180,
    "outputFormats": ["text", "srt", "vtt", "segments"],
    "language": "auto"
}

Output

{
    "url": "https://archive.org/download/gettysburg_address_librivox/gettysburg_address_lincoln_64kb.mp3",
    "fileName": "gettysburg_address_lincoln_64kb.mp3",
    "source": "direct",
    "durationSec": 161,
    "transcribedSec": 161.2,
    "chargedMinutes": 3,
    "truncated": false,
    "language": "en",
    "wordCount": 296,
    "noSpeech": false,
    "text": "The Address at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg ...",
    "srt": "1\n00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,120\nThe Address at the Dedication ...\n",
    "vtt": "WEBVTT\n\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.120\nThe Address at the Dedication ...\n",
    "segments": [{ "start": 0, "end": 5.12, "text": "The Address at the Dedication ..." }],
    "fileSizeBytes": 1290367,
    "contentType": "audio/mpeg",
    "model": "whisper-large-v3-turbo",
    "notice": null,
    "error": null
}

You can download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or read it through the Apify API.

Tips

• Big Google Drive files (over about 100 MB) show a "can't scan for viruses" page instead of the file. The Actor passes that page by itself. If Drive has paused downloads of a popular file (its daily quota), the row says so and is free.
• Folders are not supported. Share and paste each file's own link.
• Set the language when your recordings are short or noisy; automatic detection works well on clear speech.
• Video files are fine: only the audio track is used, and files up to 700 MB are accepted.
• Web pages are not files. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Spotify and Vimeo links are refused for free. For YouTube use our YouTube Transcript Scraper, for TikTok our TikTok Transcripts Actor.

FAQ

Which file formats work?

Anything ffmpeg can read: MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG, Opus, WebM, MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI and more.

How long can a file be?

Up to 300 minutes per file (set by Max minutes per file) and 700 MB. Longer files are transcribed from the start up to the limit and marked truncated.

How accurate is it?

It uses Whisper large-v3 turbo, which is accurate on clear speech in major languages. Strong accents, overlapping speakers and loud music lower accuracy. Speaker labels (diarization) are not included.

Does it work with private files?

No. The file must be reachable without signing in: a public URL or a share link set to "Anyone with the link". Private or expired links come back as free error rows.

Can I use it through the API or from an AI agent?

Yes. Start it with the Apify API or the Apify MCP server, pass audioUrls, and read the dataset when the run finishes.

Disclaimer

Only transcribe recordings you have the right to process. The Actor downloads files from the links you provide and does not keep them after the run.

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