New: Import recordings from Google Drive, OneDrive, Zoom, Dropbox & Box. First 3 imports free.

Import a recording
Pepys

Getting Started

Your first transcription

Drop in a recording or paste a link, then read the transcript, export it, or ask it questions.

In short

Upload an audio or video file from the transcribe page, or paste a link to one. A free account accepts files up to 1 GB; buying credits raises that to 5 GB, and a single recording can run to 10 hours. The job runs in the background and the finished transcript arrives with timestamps, a summary, and exports.

Upload a file

Open the transcribe page and drop a file in, or press the upload button and choose one. Pepys takes audio and video – MP3, WAV, M4A, MP4, MOV, and the formats a phone or a recorder produces – and pulls the audio out of a video file itself.

A free account accepts files up to 1 GB, which is comfortably more than an hour of lossless audio. Once you have bought credits the limit rises to 5 GB, and a single recording can be up to 10 hours long.

Or paste a link

If the recording is already online, paste the link instead. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts links are resolved directly, as are podcast RSS feeds and Zoom, Google Drive, and OneDrive files.

Pasting a link means nothing has to be downloaded and re-uploaded by hand. For Drive and OneDrive it doubles as the import route – see Google Drive for how the permission step works.

What you get back

Transcription runs in the background rather than blocking the page, so you can start a long recording and come back to it. When the job finishes, the transcript opens with speaker-labeled, timestamped segments you can click to jump to that moment in the audio.

An AI summary and the key moments are generated alongside it, and you can translate the transcript into another language. The transcript chat answers questions about the recording with cited timestamps.

Taking the transcript with you

Every transcript exports in TXT, Markdown, DOCX, PDF, SRT, VTT, and JSON. SRT and VTT carry the timings, so they are the ones to reach for when the transcript is going onto a video or into a player; DOCX and PDF are the readable documents.

Transcripts stay in your account, so you can come back for another export later instead of keeping a local copy of every format. Your account holds them along with the credit balance.

Good to know

Everything is billed per minute against your credits at 1 credit = 1 minute, including the 60 free minutes from signup. See credits and free minutes.

Speaker labels (diarization) come with any credit purchase rather than a subscription, as do whole-feed podcast batches and word-level export. See pricing.

Your first transcription – questions, answered

What file types can I upload?

Audio and video files – MP3, WAV, M4A, MP4, MOV, and the formats phones and recorders produce. Video files only need their audio track, which Pepys extracts itself.

How large can a file be?

1 GB on a free account and 5 GB once credits have been purchased, with a ceiling of 10 hours on a single recording.

Can I transcribe a YouTube video or a podcast episode?

Yes. Paste the YouTube link or the podcast RSS or Apple Podcasts link and Pepys resolves it, so nothing has to be downloaded and re-uploaded.

What export formats are available?

TXT, Markdown, DOCX, PDF, SRT, VTT, and JSON. SRT and VTT carry the timings for video and players; DOCX and PDF are the readable documents.

Do I have to wait on the page while it transcribes?

No. The job runs in the background, so you can leave the page and come back when the transcript is ready.

Related

Try it on your own audio

Create a free account and transcribe a recording – 60 minutes are included, no card required. Still stuck? Email contact@pepys.co or see the support page.