Free online voice recorder

The audio file is an MP3, which plays on almost any phone or computer. The page makes it from your recording as soon as you stop. The file the browser recorded is there too: WebM in most browsers, M4A in some older versions of Safari. Recordings over 15 minutes come only in that format. File names carry the date and time, so a week of recordings sorts itself.

The live text is a raw transcript of what the browser heard, written down as you speak. Expect little punctuation, no paragraphs and the odd misheard word, especially names. It is good for notes and for finding a moment in the recording. Copy it, or download it as a text file.

The accurate transcript is one press away once you stop. AudioPen transcribes the recording again, with punctuation, paragraphs and timestamps, and you can download it as text or as SRT and VTT subtitles for a video. It works in every browser, including ones without live text, on recordings up to 15 minutes.

Download before you close the tab. The recording lives only in this page. Reloading or closing it deletes the recording, and the browser warns you if you try while recording.

The recorder uses MediaRecorder, the recording feature built into current browsers. The audio is held in the memory of this tab, and is not sent anywhere unless you ask for an accurate transcript. The MP3 is made in the same tab with LAME, a free MP3 encoder, and the downloads come from that same copy.

The live text uses the browser's own speech recognition, called the Web Speech API. In Chrome, the browser sends your audio to Google's speech service to turn it into text. Safari uses Apple's speech recognition. Firefox does not offer the feature, and Arc, Dia, Brave and some other browsers built on Chrome turn it off, so there you get the recording without live text. Either way, the live text stays in this tab unless you ask to see it as an AudioPen note. Then the text, never the audio, is sent to AudioPen to write the note.

When you ask for an accurate transcript, the recording uploads to AudioPen's private storage, where only the transcription step can read it. It is deleted as soon as the transcript is ready, and AudioPen doesn't keep the text.

Two limits follow from that. The live text works only while you record, so it cannot transcribe a file you already have. For that, use the free audio to text converter. And its accuracy is the browser's, which is best with one clear voice close to the microphone; the accurate transcript does better. Browser support was checked on MDN and Can I Use on October 2, 2026.