WhipScribe finds the parts of a recording where people are speaking and transcribes those, skipping long silences and background noise, so hours of mostly quiet audio come back as the speech only, with timestamps that still match the original recording. One file can run up to 10 hours, and if you record every day, Workspace at $19 a month keeps months of recordings in one searchable library, with fair use of 300 hours per billing period.
Noisy recordings
A recorder left running in a meeting room, a lapel mic on a field visit or a phone in a pocket for a whole day captures far more than speech: traffic, air conditioning, footsteps, long stretches of nothing. Typing that up by hand means listening to every minute of it. Transcribing every minute, quiet ones included, is also where invented sentences tend to appear.
WhipScribe works the other way round. We find the parts of the recording where people are speaking and transcribe those. Long silences and background noise between them are skipped, so a mostly quiet recording comes back as the conversation and nothing else.
Skipping noise between voices is not the same as removing noise on top of a voice. If someone talks over a loud generator or from across a crowded room, some words can still come out wrong. We do not clean or alter your audio file. Every line carries its timestamp, so the quickest check is to jump to that moment and listen. When every word must be right, for a legal record for example, a human transcription service is the better choice.
Very long recordings
No splitting, no stitching. Long files are processed in parts automatically and come back as one transcript.
One file can be up to 10 hours long or 5 GB. Files up to 500 MB go in the box on this page; bigger ones continue on the upload page. A long WAV can pass 5 GB, so save it as MP3 or M4A first.
About 2 minutes of processing per hour of audio. A 10-hour recording takes about 20 minutes; a one-hour file usually takes a few.
A 9.3-hour recording transcribed in 17 minutes (95,578 words), checked 4 Oct 2026. The recordings are public domain and the transcripts are open: see the long-file runs.
Open the 9.3-hour transcript and scroll to the end: the timestamps run to the last minute of the original file. If your recorder lets you choose, files of a few hours each are the most dependable; above 8 hours works, as that run shows, but is the edge of what we promise. More on long files: transcribe long audio, transcription for long recordings and long video.
Recording continuously
Some people do not have one long recording. They have one every day: a researcher recording every site visit for a season, a team that records every meeting, a reporter who keeps a recorder running through a whole trial, a teacher who records every class. For that, the answer is Workspace: $19 a month.
At 100 hours a month, Workspace works out to $0.19 per hour of audio. If you only record now and then, packs are cheaper: they start at $4 for 500 minutes and the credits never expire. Full details are on the pricing page.
Who sends us these recordings
Site visits, ethnographic fieldwork and interviews recorded outdoors or in busy places. The speech comes back with its timestamp; the wind and traffic do not. See research interview transcription.
A recorder left running through a hearing, a rally or a long day on a story. Search the transcript for the quote, then jump to it and listen before you publish. See journalist interviews.
A room recorder through a full-day workshop, breaks and all. The breaks drop out; the discussion stays, with chapters for each topic. See meeting recordings.
Handheld recorders, dictaphones and Zoom H1 files that run for hours. Upload them as they are. See handheld recorders and dictaphones.
A whole teaching day or a term of classes, with the quiet group work skipped and every lecture searchable. See transcribe a lecture.
Hours of raw session audio before the edit, with false starts and long pauses. Find the good stretch by searching for it instead of scrubbing. See transcribe a podcast.
Record only where you have the right to: tell people when a recorder is running and follow the consent rules where you record.
Sending many files
Continuous recording means many files. There are three ways to send them:
Watching a folder and transcribing new files the moment they arrive is not available yet; re-importing the folder does the same job in one click. For a large backlog, see bulk transcription and large files.
What it costs
The summary of any recording is free to read; a pack or Workspace opens the full transcript. A recording uses minutes by its length: a 10-hour file is 600 minutes.
| Option | Price | Audio covered | Per audio hour | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $4 pack | 500 minutes | 8 h 20 min | $0.48 | One-off batches; credits never expire |
| $8 pack | 1,000 minutes | 16 h 40 min | $0.48 | One-off batches; credits never expire |
| $12 pack | 2,000 minutes | 33 h 20 min | $0.36 | One-off batches; credits never expire |
| $24 pack | 5,000 minutes | 83 h 20 min | $0.29 | One-off batches; credits never expire |
| Workspace | $19 a month | fair use 300 h | $0.19 at 100 h | Recording every day or every week |
Prices in US dollars from our pricing page, checked 4 Oct 2026. No seat fees. Yearly options and the API are on the pricing page.
Check the output
These are public-domain recordings, not customer files.
FAQ
Yes. We find the stretches where people are speaking and transcribe those; long silences and background noise between them are skipped. Noise that sits right on top of a voice can still cost words, so check any line that matters against the audio at its timestamp.
Yes. Every line carries the time it was said in the original recording, so 3:42:10 in the transcript is 3:42:10 in your file, even when hours of quiet came before it.
You get no summary for it. A recording that is only noise, music, filler or a short fragment repeating is not given a summary report, so you are never shown an invented summary of nothing.
Up to 10 hours or 5 GB per file. Long files are split into parts and processed automatically. On 4 October 2026 a public 9.3-hour recording was transcribed in 17 minutes (95,578 words); the runs are on our long-files proof page.
About 2 minutes per hour of audio, so a 10-hour recording takes about 20 minutes. Most short files finish in under a minute.
Workspace is $19 a month with fair use of 300 hours per billing period, about 10 hours a day. Every recording stays in your library, where you can search all of them at once. Past 300 hours, new submissions are slowed down rather than charged extra. For occasional recordings, packs start at $4 for 500 minutes and credits never expire.
Yes. Import a Google Drive folder from your library and every audio and video file in it is transcribed, subfolders included, into the same folder structure. Import the folder again later and only the new files are transcribed.
Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training. You can delete a recording and its transcript at any time.
Related
Up to 10 hours a file, about 2 minutes per audio hour. Workspace $19 a month if you record every day.
For the recordings you have now: see transcription services from $4, audio transcription services for interviews and calls and an online transcription service with nothing to install.