We show the transcript here and email you the text, SRT and VTT, so you still have them tomorrow.
Free. Your first one needs no account; after that, sign in for one recording a day, up to 90 minutes. Longer lectures? Slice Transcribe hours take 3-hour recordings.
Prices
Pay once · never expires · no subscription
Hour pack
5 hours
$2.99 once
about 60¢ an hour
Hour pack
15 hours
$6.99 once
about 47¢ an hour
Semester packBest value
40 hours
$14.99 once
about 37¢ an hour
You make a free Slice account first, so the hours have somewhere to go.
Every pack: recordings up to 3 hours, no daily limit, Word and Notion export, notes with timestamps. A 47-minute lecture uses 47 minutes.
How do I transcribe interviews for my dissertation?
Upload each interview recording (MP3, M4A, WAV, MP4 and most other formats, up to 600MB) and you get a transcript with each speaker labelled (Speaker A, Speaker B) and the files to download. Free: one interview a day up to 90 minutes, kept 30 days. Slice Transcribe hour packs (5 hours for $2.99, 15 hours for $6.99 or 40 hours for $14.99), paid once with no subscription and hours that never expire: interviews up to 3 hours, a timestamp on every paragraph for quoting, Word export for coding and anonymising, and transcripts kept on your account until you delete them. An interview uses its length rounded up to the minute. Recordings are processed by AssemblyAI, deleted after 7 days, and not used for training. It is automatic, not human, transcription: check it against the recording, and make sure your consent forms and ethics approval allow a third-party transcription service.
Free, or hour packs
| Feature | Free | Hour packs |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | From $2.99, paid once |
| Longest recording | 90 minutes | 3 hours |
| How many | One recording a day | As many as your hours cover, no daily limit |
| How hours are counted | — | Each recording’s length, rounded up to the minute: a 47-minute lecture uses 47 minutes |
| Do they run out? | Resets daily | Never: the hours do not expire |
| Account | Not for your first one; then a free account | A free Slice account |
| Downloads | .txt, .srt, .vtt | Word (.docx), Copy for Notion, notes with timestamps, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt |
| Speaker labels | Yes, when more than one person talks | Yes, when more than one person talks |
| How long the text is kept | 30 days | On your account until you delete it |
| Audio kept | 7 days, then deleted | 7 days, then deleted |
Paid once by card through Stripe. No subscription, nothing renews, and the hours never expire. Any pack can be bought as a gift: you get a link to send, and the hours go to whoever redeems it. More on Slice Transcribe.
Before you upload: consent and ethics
For research with people, the transcript is research data, and your approved protocol is what decides how it is handled. Three things to check before you upload an interview anywhere, including here:
- Consent to record. The participant agreed to be recorded, and ideally knows the recording will be transcribed.
- A third-party service. Your ethics application or data management plan allows recordings to be processed by an external transcription service. Ours sends audio to AssemblyAI, a US company, for speech-to-text.
- Retention. Your plan says how long data is kept. Ours: audio deleted after 7 days; transcripts after 30 days on the free tool, or kept on your account until you delete them when made with hour-pack hours; and you can delete any transcript yourself straight away.
This is not legal or ethics advice. If in doubt, ask your supervisor or ethics committee first. Our privacy policy has the details they may ask for.
Does it label the interviewer and the participant?
Yes, as Speaker A and Speaker B (and C and onwards for a group interview), wherever the voice changes. It does not know who is who, which is an advantage for pseudonymised work: find and replace Speaker A with “Interviewer” and Speaker B with your participant code, such as P07. One voice on its own gets no labels.
Quoting with timestamps
With an hour pack every paragraph of the notes and the Word file starts with its time in the recording, like [23:41]. When you pull a quote into a chapter, note the participant code and that time (P07, 23:41) and you can always go back to the exact moment to check the wording. On the free tool the .srt file carries the same timings for every line.
Anonymising the transcript
- Download the Word or .txt file and work only on your copy.
- Replace speaker labels with codes, then names of people, places, employers, schools and dates that identify someone, with placeholders such as [colleague] or [city].
- Keep the key that links codes to people separately, as your data management plan says.
- Delete the transcript on our side from its page once you have your copy.
What it is not
It is an automatic transcript, not a human one, and not full verbatim: it adds punctuation and does not mark pauses, overlaps or laughter. For thematic analysis that is usually what you want to start from; for conversation analysis, it is a first draft. Budget time to read each transcript against its recording, especially for accents, quiet participants and specialist terms.
How to transcribe a research interview
- 1Check your consent and ethics approvalMake sure participants agreed to recording, and that your protocol allows a transcription service.
- 2Upload one interviewAudio or video up to 600MB. Free up to 90 minutes; 3 hours with an hour pack.
- 3Read it against the recordingSpeakers are labelled A, B, C. Correct names, jargon and anything you will quote.
- 4Download, anonymise, deleteTake the Word or text file, replace identifiers with your codes, then delete our copy from the transcript page.
Questions
Can I use an automatic transcription service for research interviews?
Does it label who is speaking?
Is it verbatim?
How do I anonymise the transcript?
How long do you keep interview recordings and transcripts?
Can I transcribe interviews in French or another language?
For students
- Transcribe lectures — Recorded lectures to notes with timestamps.
- Transcribe seminars — Group discussions, with each speaker labelled.
The same tool, for other files
Audio to text · MP3 to text · Video to text · Audio to SRT · Transcribe a podcast · Your transcripts
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