How long 3 hours of audio takes about six minutes, not a day and a half.
Three hours of audio takes about six minutes to transcribe here, because processing runs at roughly 2 minutes per hour of audio, plus usually less than a minute in the queue. Typing it by hand is commonly cited at about 4 hours per hour of audio, which for three hours is a day and a half of work. The timings below come from real long files, and you can check them on the proof page.
Where the time goes
Upload, queue, transcribe.
Upload: your connection
Moving the file is often the longest step. A three-hour MP3 of about 170 MB takes a minute or two on a home connection, while a three-hour 1080p video of several gigabytes can take much longer. Pasting a YouTube, podcast or Drive link skips this step.
Queue: usually under a minute
Most files start within a minute of arriving. At busy moments a long file may wait a little longer for a free slot, and the page shows its progress either way.
Transcription: about 2 minutes an hour
One hour is ready in about 2 minutes, three hours in about 6, five hours in about 10 and ten hours in about 20. Those are typical figures, not promises, and a noisy or crowded recording can run slower.
What the clock buys
When it finishes you have the transcript, a brief with the thesis and takeaways, chapters with timestamps and the names and numbers that were said. Start a long file from the upload page and come back when it is done.
Measured runs
Three hours by hand, three hours here.
✗ Typing it yourself
Manual transcription is commonly cited at about 4 hours of typing for every hour of audio, and more when the sound is poor or several people talk at once.
- 1 hour of audio: about 4 hours of typing
- 2 hours of audio: about a full working day
- 3 hours of audio: about a day and a half
- 5 hours of audio: about two and a half days
- Pauses to replay every unclear sentence
- Timestamps added by hand, if at all
✓ Public timings from long files
Recorded runs, published on the long-files proof page.
- 2.48 hours transcribed in 200 seconds
- 4.94 hours transcribed in 372 seconds
- 9.31 hours transcribed in 1,033 seconds
- Three hours expected in about six minutes
- Ten hours, the per-file ceiling, in about 20 minutes
- No tab to babysit while it runs
Sample output
Six minutes later, hour three is searchable.
Illustrative sample, not a real recording. It shows lines from late in a three-hour file, ready at the same moment as the opening.
Export
One transcript. Five clean formats.
Every pack exports all five — no format is held back for a higher tier.
Plain text
De-ummed paragraphs. Ready to paste.
SRT captions
Timed to the speech. Every video editor reads this.
WebVTT
HTML5 player + YouTube uploads.
Show notes
Formatted with chapters and pull-quotes.
Machine-readable
Timestamped text for your own tools.
Pricing
Honest pricing, no surprises.
A pack from $6 (500 minutes) opens the full transcript. After that, no subscription and no auto-renew — every tier is a one-time minute pack, and credits never expire. Buy once, use the minutes whenever you need them.
Casual pack
$6/500 min
8 hours of audio — $0.72 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 500 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- Unlimited AI chat per transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$12/2,000 min
33 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 2,000 minutes of audio
- Priority queue
- All export formats
- Unlimited AI chat per transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Priority queue
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Time questions, answered with timings.
How long does it take to transcribe 3 hours of audio?
About six minutes of processing, at roughly 2 minutes per hour of audio, plus the time to upload the file and usually under a minute in the queue. A difficult recording can take longer.
How long would it take to type 3 hours of audio by hand?
A figure commonly cited for manual transcription is about 4 hours of work per hour of audio, so three hours of recording comes to around a day and a half of typing, before any checking.
What does transcribing 3 hours cost?
Three hours uses 180 of the 500 minutes in the $6 pack, and the rest stay on your account with no expiry. Your first recording gets the first 20 minutes free.
Does a bigger or longer file slow things down?
Length sets the processing time, and size mostly sets the upload time. One file can be up to 10 hours or 5 GB, and a file over 2 GB starts once a pack is on your account.
Is it faster to split a long recording?
No. Splitting adds uploads and leaves you with separate transcripts to join, and the 9.31-hour file on the proof page finished as one run in 1,033 seconds. Only a recording over 10 hours needs to go in as two files.
Which languages and exports, and is it private?
Speech in 99 languages is detected automatically, and the transcript downloads as TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT or JSON. The audio is transcribed on our own servers and is never used for training models.
Related
Related pages.
Three hours of audio. About six minutes of waiting.
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