Transcribe 3 hours of audio without cutting it up.
Three hours is the length most transcription tools ask you to split. Here you upload the whole file once, it is usually done in about 6 minutes, and the 180 minutes come out of a $6 pack that still has 320 left; the first 20 minutes are free to read first.
The file most tools refuse
Three hours goes up the way it was recorded.
Why three hours gets split elsewhere
Common caps sit at one hour, two hours, or 25 MB for the OpenAI Whisper API. A three-hour recording passes all of them, so the usual advice is to cut it into pieces. Here a file can run to 10 hours, so three is ordinary.
Six minutes, give or take
Processing averages about 2 minutes per hour of audio. A three-hour file is typically ready in around 6 minutes, and our published long-file run shows 9.31 hours finished in 1,033 seconds.
Priced on the pack you would buy
180 minutes from the $6 pack of 500 leaves 320 minutes, enough for another three-hour recording with time left over. That is $0.72 an audio hour, paid once.
A map of the three hours
The brief states the thesis and takeaways. Chapters with timestamps divide the recording by topic, and the names, numbers and dates said aloud are listed so you can find the moment without listening again. For a three-hour panel or deposition, that list is often the fastest way back to a specific exchange.
The usual route
Three hours, the hard way.
✗ Split into chunks
Tools with a lower ceiling push the work onto you before they start. Splitting also means the summary of each part misses what was said in the others.
- Three or more chunks to cut
- A separate wait for each chunk
- Words dropped at every seam
- Timestamps you have to offset by hand
- Summaries of parts, never the whole
- A per-file fee charged three times
✓ One file, one result
The recording stays whole, so the summary and chapters cover all three hours.
- Upload the full 180 minutes
- One clock from start to finish
- A brief for the whole recording
- First 20 minutes free
- $6 pack covers it, 320 minutes left
- Exports for reading, editing and captions
Illustrative sample
Hour three, still the same timeline.
Illustrative lines composed for this page. They show a three-hour panel discussion where the timestamps continue past 02:00:00 instead of restarting.
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
Three hours of audio: questions people ask.
How long does it take to transcribe 3 hours of audio?
Around 6 minutes on average. Speed is about 2 minutes per audio hour, and a public run transcribed 9.31 hours in 1,033 seconds. Typing three hours by hand usually takes twelve to eighteen hours.
How much does it cost to transcribe 3 hours of audio?
Three hours is 180 minutes. On the $6 pack of 500 minutes that leaves 320 for later, and if you transcribe often the $12 pack of 2,000 minutes brings the rate to $0.36 an hour. The first 20 minutes are free to read before you buy.
Can I upload a 3-hour file without splitting it?
Yes. The limit is 10 hours or 5 GB per file, whichever comes first. A three-hour recording is well inside both. Recordings this long tend to come from conference sessions, depositions, long podcast episodes and community meetings, and none of them need cutting first.
What size is a 3-hour audio file?
A three-hour MP3 is usually 170 to 260 MB, and three hours of CD-quality WAV is close to 1.9 GB. Both upload before you have a pack, because the pre-pack limit is 2 GB. Phone recorders that save M4A usually come in lower still.
Does it work for languages other than English?
It does. The language is detected automatically from 99 supported languages, and the same chapters and brief come back.
Which exports do I get, and what happens to the audio?
You get TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON from one run, so there is no second pass for captions. On privacy: recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training, and deleting a file removes its transcript too.
Related
Next steps and related pages.
Keep the three hours whole. Upload once.
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