Transcribing audio from interviews, lectures, voice notes, conferences, and more can be time-consuming and tedious, not to mention prone to error when converting audio to written words. However, nowadays, there are various tools with Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can perform these tasks for us. With that said, here are 10 tools that make audio to text transcription easy:

1. Amazon Transcribe Amazon Transcribe is an automatic speech recognition platform primarily aimed at businesses. It transcribes calls, real-time conversations, generates subtitles, and transcribes multimedia files. It features automatic language and speaker identification, custom vocabulary, conversation insights, customer data protection, dictation, and more. It offers a one-year free trial, transcribing up to 60 minutes of audio per month, and then moves to tiered pricing based on usage.
2. Contents Contents offers an audio to text converter tool that stands out because it not only allows uploading an audio file for transcription but also the reverse, converting text to audio. It has a simple interface where users can upload the file they want to transcribe, select the language, voice type (in the case of text to audio), and the file format. It offers a 7-day free trial, with other subscription plans available.
3. Deepgram Deepgram is a comprehensive AI transcription base with various features that provide a deeper understanding of language and expressions. It can be used for live talks, pre-recorded audio, or video. Users can assign keywords for it to focus on, activate profanity filtering, detect voice activity to avoid pauses affecting the text, and organize information into paragraphs. It also offers summarization of audio segments. It provides 12,000 minutes free to start, with various subscription packages available.
4. Google Speech-to-Text Google Speech-to-Text not only transcribes audio to text but also functions as a voice controller and provides interactive voice responses (IVR) in customer service systems. It can handle dictations even in noisy environments and recognize different audio channels to focus only on what the user wants. New users receive €277.67 credit, with all customers getting 60 free minutes per month.
5. IBM Watson Speech to Text IBM Watson Speech to Text is designed to recognize and interpret natural language, whether from an audio file (even low-quality ones) or voice dictation. It caters to customer service businesses and also functions as a virtual assistant for information processing and search. It offers fast voice transcription in multiple languages, with 500 free minutes per month and various paid plans available.
6. iSpeech iSpeech allows both text-to-audio and audio-to-text conversion. It features a simple interface where users can paste the text they want to convert to speech, select the language, and hit play. It offers a free mode with limitations on character count and adds a message to the end of the audio conversion indicating its service usage. It can also recognize speech and generate text from it.
7. Microsoft Azure Speech to Text Microsoft Azure Speech to Text allows fast and accurate transcription of audio into text in over 100 languages. It also converts text to audio and provides voice translation. Users can add specific words to their vocabulary for future recognition, store information in the cloud or other accessible containers, and recognize the speaker’s identity. Pricing depends on the type of service required.
8. Microsoft Translator Microsoft Translator is an automatic translation service that can translate real-time conversations, street signs, or documents on your device. It aims to break language barriers and offers personal, commercial, and educational usage plans. It integrates with platforms like Skype, certain browsers, and other mobile applications.
9. Nuance Communications Nuance Communications specializes in speech recognition and natural language processing through AI. It can automatically convert conversations into text and is known for developing Siri, Apple’s voice assistant. Dragon Professional, designed for doctors to dictate voice and transcribe clinical documents, is one of its notable creations, with a cost of €999 euros.
10. Otter.ai Otter.ai focuses on real-time voice dictation for transcription during Zoom, Google Meet, and other similar platform meetings. It also records and allows playback of conversations after the call, identifies conversation participants, and enables text searches in transcribed recordings. It offers a free basic plan for up to 300 monthly transcriptions and three paid plans: Pro, Business, and Enterprise.
11. Whisper Whisper, belonging to the creators of ChatGPT, is an open-source automatic speech recognition system that transcribes audio to text. Trained with 680,000 hours of data in different languages, it can transcribe in multiple languages and even translate them into English. Once the audio file is uploaded, its AI analyzes and transcribes it into words, providing a more reliable service than most free tools.