Free Transcription Tools That Make Your Life Easier

Studies have shown that humans aren’t great at multitasking, and furious note-taking is the ultimate multitask. Luckily, free transcription tools can mitigate the productivity cost of note-taking in meetings or interviews.

Accurate and reliable transcription can make nearly any job easier, whether you’re a journalist, a content creator, or you simply have a lot of meetings. After all, a searchable, scannable, text document is infinitely easier to work with than audio or video files. Transcription tools streamline your job and eliminate the need to take intensive notes.

But what’s better than transcription tools? Free transcription tools! Audio tools that add free transcription software are even better because they combine multiple important services into one handy application. Here are the best free transcription tools currently available.

1. Rev Voice Recorder With VoiceHub

Rev’s free Voice Recorder app comes with AI transcription tools that go above and beyond simple transcription. It captures high-quality audio anywhere you need to record. In a single app, you can join and automatically record and transcribe any meeting. But what makes our Voice Recorder app second to none is the inclusion of VoiceHub, our AI notetaker and assistant. 

VoiceHub will not only automatically take notes for you, but it’ll also attend meetings in your place when needed. VoiceHub also summarizes every interaction, provides highlights and insights, and generally acts as your personal assistant. And since it’s powered by our 99% accurate ASR, you know that you can rely on it.

‍Our Favorite Feature: Industry-leading ASR accuracy
‍Cost: Both apps are free, with paid plans starting at $9.99/month for more minutes and features like human transcription.

2. Fathom

Fathom is a free AI note-taker built specifically for recording and transcribing meetings. Its compatibility is limited, working with the major players in the teleconferencing game but not much else. If you use Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, you’re golden. Outside of meetings, though, Fathom doesn’t feature a singular voice-to-text option.

What sets Fathom apart is its CRM integration. Fathom claims that it saves users up to 20 minutes of post-meeting data entry per usage. So while it’s not great for taking voice notes, it makes up for it by making meetings even more productive.

‍Our Favorite Feature: CRM integration
‍Cost: Free, with paid plans starting at $15/month

3. Riverside

Riverside is primarily a recording platform built for podcasts and interviews, but it offers a free web-based transcription tool that can generate AI-powered transcription in 100 languages. 

Because Riverside’s focus is on recording and editing audio, it’s easy to add captions and subtitles to your videos. If you do use the paid version of Riverside for recording, its text-based audio editor lets you edit your transcripts and recorded tracks in the same ways. And since Riverside is a recording tool first, it comes with a steeper learning curve than more focused transcription apps.

‍Our Favorite Feature: Transcription in 100 languages
‍Cost: Free, with many editing features available starting at $24/month

4. Otter.ai

Otter.ai is a relatively easy-to-use AI transcription service that’s available as an app for Android and iOS as well as in your browser. Its AI assistant easily integrates into your calendar and can automatically attend meetings, record and transcribe them, and take detailed notes for you. Its AI can learn slang and custom vocabulary, and it automatically provides timestamped transcriptions for every meeting.

While Otter is a perfectly adequate meeting transcription tool, the free version doesn’t let you upload files for transcription, and it doesn’t offer a built-in voice recorder. The accuracy of Otter’s AI should also be called into question, especially when comparing Otter vs. Rev. But if you have time to edit your transcripts, you might not need an alternative to Otter.ai because its live editing tools are robust.

‍Our Favorite Feature: Live editing tools
‍Cost: Free

‍5. ChatGPT

Many people don’t know that you can use ChatGPT for transcription, but you can! It’s pretty straightforward and doesn’t offer many options, but if you need to transcribe an audio file for free, you can upload it to ChatGPT and receive a text document to work with.

However, ChatGPT is not a dedicated transcription service and its ASR isn’t incredibly accurate. With some practice, you can improve its output quality by asking the right questions, but the learning curve is steep. Compared to dedicated voice-to-text transcription services, ChatGPT is barebones, but works quickly if you’re in a pinch.

‍Our Favorite Feature: The ability to simply ask a question and get an answer.
‍Cost: Free

‍6. TurboScribe

TurboScribe is a web-based free transcription software that offers three 30-minute transcriptions every day. It offers transcription in 98 languages, and claims to be more than 99% accurate. It’s powered by OpenAI’s Whisper Model, which has proven to be one of the industry leaders.

TurboScribe’s most interesting feature is its GPT AI, which lets you query your recordings and transcriptions with a chatbot. You can ask the AI questions about your project, and it’ll offer reliable answers. It’s handy, but can also be finicky if you aren’t well-versed in using an AI chatbot. TurboScribe is hard to beat for quick, browser-based transcription, but if you need to use it offline or without consistent Wi-Fi, you should look elsewhere.

‍Our Favorite Feature: AI chatbot
‍Cost: Free, with paid plans starting at $10/month

7. OTranscribe

If simplicity is what you’re looking for in a free transcription service, you’ll be hard-pressed to find something simpler than OTranscribe. With this open-sourced, browser-based AI transcription service, you simply open a tab, upload a file or YouTube link, and start transcribing. 

OTranscribe is strictly for manual transcription, as opposed to being an automated voice-to-text recorder. But sometimes a simple way to manually transcribe your clips is required, too. OTranscribe automatically opens your file in the same window as your transcription document, and it lets you edit, format, and timestamp without ever leaving your page.

‍Our Favorite Feature: Simplicity
‍Cost: Free

Benefits of Transcribing Tools

A recent study of 30,000 companies’ meeting statistics showed that the average worker spends 28.3% of their work week in meetings. That’s a lot of time spent taking notes, multi-tasking, and trying to retain information. Transcription tools can help make every minute more productive, no matter your industry. And it doesn’t stop with meetings!

Some examples:

For legal professionals, hours upon hours of video depositions or intake calls can be turned into scannable, searchable text documents.

• For journalists, transcription provides a permanent record of everything your sources say.
• For teachers (and students), every lecture can be made available for ease of review and study.
• For medical professionals, dictation is already a way of life, but accurate, reliable transcripts can improve your records.
• For content creators, audio-to-text transcriptions can boost your SEO more than video alone can.
• For working teams, it’s much easier to share and collaborate with transcribed text files than with cumbersome audio and video.

Go For AI, Go For Accuracy

Free transcription can certainly streamline your workflow and raise your productivity levels above and beyond simply recording audio or video. But if your transcription isn’t accurate, it can actually create even more work (which defeats the purpose). When looking for a free or affordable quality transcription service, research its accuracy before choosing. The last thing you need is to spend time editing a transcript!

We’ve done a lot of the research for you, though! Our 2024 ASR Benchmark Report is available for download and it proves that Rev is more accurate than the other leading transcription services. For just a sample of what you’ll find inside, consider that Rev’s ASR was:

• 47% more accurate than competitors in recordings in challenging environments
• Produced the lowest error rate of the competitors tested
• Handily beat Google, Otter.ai, Amazon, and Microsoft’s ASR in accuracy

Free Transcription You Can Trust

You can start streamlining your workflow right now by transforming your audio or video files to text documents with Rev. Rev makes it simple to get free transcription quickly and reliably, and our dedication to your security and privacy means that you can rest easy knowing your data is safe.

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