Podcast to text: transcribe your episodes online for free

Why turn a podcast into text

• Search engines read text, not audio: a transcript or an article based on it lets people find the episode through what was actually said.
• Show notes are faster to write from a transcript than from memory or by re-listening.
• Quotes for social media and newsletters can be copied word for word.
• Listeners who are deaf or hard of hearing, or who simply prefer reading, can follow the episode.
• A text version is easier to translate and adapt for listeners in another language.

Transcribe a podcast to text in 4 steps

1. Sign in to voqia.fr with your Google account. The first 10 minutes are free, no credit card required.
2. Open File mode and upload the episode: MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, FLAC or WebM audio, or an MP4 or MOV video, up to 500 MB.
3. Turn on Speaker detection if the episode has a host and guests, then start the transcription. The spoken language is detected automatically.
4. Read the timestamped text, rename the speakers (Speaker 1 becomes your host's name), then copy it or download it as a Word document (.docx).

Host and guests: speaker detection

In File mode, Speaker detection (also called diarization) attributes each passage to a speaker. You rename them once and the whole transcript becomes readable as a conversation, which is what you need for an interview podcast or a panel.

It works best when people do not talk over each other and each voice is recorded on a clean microphone. If two guests have very similar voices, check the attributions before publishing quotes.

Translate a podcast to text in another language

Voqia transcribes episodes in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and Arabic, and also Russian and Turkish through automatic language detection. The transcript stays in the language that was spoken. To understand or reuse an episode recorded in another language, you have two options:

The AI summary in your language

After the transcription, ask for the AI summary: it is written in the language of the interface, so in English when you use Voqia in English. It gives you the topics, key points and action items of a French or Spanish episode, for example, without a full translation.

A live translation while the episode plays

For a sentence-by-sentence translation, play the episode in a browser tab (Chrome or Edge on a computer) and use Live mode: share that tab with its audio and turn on the Translate transformation. The original text and its translation appear side by side, into English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese or Arabic. This uses minutes for the time the episode plays.

From transcript to show notes, articles and subtitles

• Show notes: start from the AI summary (context, key points, actions) and add your links and timestamps.
• Blog post: paste the transcript into your editor, cut the hesitations and add headings; the spoken structure of the episode often gives you the outline.
• Quotes: the timestamps let you find the exact moment in the audio to make a clip.
• Subtitles: Voqia gives a timestamped transcript, not a ready-made SRT or VTT file. Paste the text into your video editor or captioning tool, which handles the timing on screen.

Tips for an accurate transcript

• Upload the final mix rather than a raw recording with long silences or music beds under the voices.
• Keep the intro music short: a song under the speech makes recognition harder.
• Check names of guests, brands and places: they are the most frequent corrections in any automatic transcript.
• Episode over 500 MB? Export the audio only (MP3 or M4A) from your editing software: the file becomes much smaller and the text is the same.

How many minutes does an episode use?

Transcription is counted on the length of the audio: a 45-minute episode uses about 45 minutes. If a file is longer than your remaining balance, Voqia warns you before sending it when your browser can read its length, and lets you top up or transcribe only the part your balance covers. There is no subscription: you buy minutes once and they never expire. Prices are set in euros; outside the euro area, the secure Stripe payment page may show the amount in your own currency, such as dollars or pounds.

What Voqia does not do

• It does not import episodes from a link, a podcast app or an RSS feed: you upload the audio file you have.
• It does not export subtitle files (SRT or VTT): you copy the text or export it to Word.
• It has no transcript library: copy the text or export it to Word when you are done (your browser keeps a local copy for 24 hours, erased when you sign out).

Frequently asked questions