How well does it handle Swahili?
Supported end-to-end; treat the output as a fast first draft and plan a review pass — it still beats typing from scratch.
The strongest sub-Saharan language in Whisper's training mix.
Kenyan and Tanzanian accents both transcribe; Sheng (Nairobi slang) mixing needs review.
What you get
Speaker labels
Every voice in the recording is separated and labelled — works in Swahili the same as in English, because diarization listens to voices, not words.
Word-level timestamps
Each word is timed to the audio, which is what makes accurate Swahili SRT and VTT subtitle files possible.
Search & quote
The transcript is searchable in Swahili — jump to the exact second something was said and copy it with its timestamp.
Every export
TXT, SRT, VTT, DOCX and JSON on every pack — no format paywall.
Who transcribes Swahili audio here
Sermons, radio archives, NGO field interviews.
Questions people ask
Do I need to tell it the audio is Swahili?
No — the language is detected from the first seconds of audio automatically. If a recording mixes Swahili and English, each part is transcribed in the language actually spoken.
Can I get English text from Swahili audio?
Yes. Alongside transcription in Swahili, the engine can translate the speech to English text in the same pass — useful for subtitling Swahili content for an international audience.
Does it work on Swahili video, not just audio?
Yes — upload MP4/MOV/WebM or paste a link; the audio track is extracted automatically and transcribed the same way.
How much does it cost?
The preview is instant with no signup. Credits are one-time purchases that never expire: $4 for 300 minutes, $12 for 2,000 minutes (about 36¢ per hour of audio).
Is this live captioning?
No — Whipscribe transcribes recordings, not live speech. Upload a file that already exists and the Swahili transcript is typically ready in about a minute per half hour of audio.
Related: Audio to text · Subtitle generator · Interview transcription · Bulk transcription