A free transcript cleaner that turns a raw transcript from Zoom, Teams, YouTube or any recording into clean, readable text in the speaker's own words.
5.0(1 rating)Paste a raw transcript, drop a file or give a video link. The timestamps, ums and stutters come out at once, then the AI fixes punctuation, grammar, paragraphs and misheard names, and every part is checked so nothing is dropped or made up.
Add your transcript
About the recording
Picked from the speaker names: 2 is an interview, 3 or more a panel, none a solo talk.
Every sentence stays. Only filler, false starts and repeats go, so it's usually 80% to 95% as long.
Clean it
Add a transcript in step 1 first.
Your clean transcript
This is the code's quick clean, with no AI yet. Press Clean my transcript for the AI's edit.
This free transcript cleaner turns a raw transcript into clean text people can read, in the speaker's own words.
Paste one from Zoom, Teams, YouTube, Otter or any recording, drop a caption file, or paste a video link. The timestamps, ums and stutters come out at once. Then the AI fixes punctuation, grammar, paragraphs and misheard names, and every part is checked so nothing is dropped or made up.
Here's what a transcript cleaner does, how clean and tight differ, and how to trust the result.
What is a transcript cleaner?
A transcript cleaner is a tool that edits a raw transcript into readable text. It takes out timestamps and filler words, fixes punctuation and grammar, and breaks long runs of speech into paragraphs.
A good one edits and never rewrites. Every point, story, example and number stays, in the speaker's words.
What it cleans
- Example
- 00:01:02,500 --> 00:01:04,000
- What happens
- Taken out in your browser
- Example
- um, uh, er
- What happens
- Taken out in your browser
- Example
- "I, I, I think", "the the"
- What happens
- Taken out in your browser
- Example
- YouTube's auto captions repeat each line as it rolls
- What happens
- Taken out in your browser
- Example
- "so today we talk about pricing and then"
- What happens
- The AI adds sentences and paragraphs
- Example
- like, you know, I mean, basically
- What happens
- The AI cuts them where they mean nothing
- Example
- "cloud code" for Claude Code
- What happens
- The AI fixes them from a list of known names
- Example
- a phrase speech to text got wrong
- What happens
- Marked [unclear], never guessed
How to use the transcript cleaner
Clean or tight?
A clean copy keeps every sentence and cuts only what carries no meaning: filler, false starts and repeats. It's usually 80% to 95% as long as the transcript. Use it for interviews published as they were said, show notes, quotes and research.
A tight copy also cuts what the speaker says twice and tightens rambling, but keeps every question, answer, point, story, example and number. It's usually 55% to 80% as long. Use it when the transcript will be read like an article.
How it fixes misheard names
Speech to text writes names the way they sound. In 120 of Navid's own YouTube videos, 1.3 million words of auto captions, the same mistakes came up again and again:
| The captions said | The name |
|---|---|
| chat gbt | ChatGPT |
| cloud code | Claude Code |
| mid-journey | Midjourney |
| hopspot | HubSpot |
| tim ferris | Tim Ferriss |
| lex fredman | Lex Fridman |
| robert green | Robert Greene |
The cleaner never lets the AI fix a name from memory alone. For each part, it finds the names that sound like the words: from a list of over 800 tools, companies and creators, the speakers' names, and the names you add. The AI uses one only when the words clearly mean it, so "I built it with cloud code" becomes Claude Code, and "cloud storage" stays cloud storage.
Every name it changes is listed under the transcript. Press one to undo it. A name that isn't on any list gets an orange mark, so you know to check it.
How you know nothing was dropped
An AI cleaning a long transcript can skip a sentence, merge 2 speakers' turns, or write something that was never said. So every part is checked in code after the AI:
- Every speaker's turn came back, in order
- No stretch of the transcript went missing
- Nothing appears that the transcript doesn't say
- Every new name is on a list
- No timestamp, um or uh is left
- The length fits the level you picked
A part that fails is sent again once, and the better answer is kept. The Changes tab shows every word the AI cut in red and every word it added in green.
Interviews, panels and solo talks
Speaker names from your file are kept: "Sam:", "Sam Rivera 0:03", Zoom's names in its captions and Teams' names in its VTT file. In an interview, the host's lines can be bold, the way interviews are printed. You can rename speakers, hide the names for a Q&A layout, or add a time at the start of each turn.
A transcript with no speaker names, like YouTube's captions, is cleaned into paragraphs. Speech to text can't tell voices apart, so the cleaner doesn't guess who said what.
Where to get your transcript
| Where it's from | How to get it |
|---|---|
| Zoom | Download the audio transcript (VTT) of a cloud recording |
| Microsoft Teams | Download the meeting transcript as .docx or .vtt |
| YouTube | Paste the video's link here, or open Show transcript under the description and copy it |
| Otter, Descript, Riverside | Export the transcript as text or SRT |
| A podcast | Paste its Spotify or Apple Podcasts link, or its RSS feed |
For the main points and chapters of a video instead of every word, the YouTube video summarizer and the YouTube timestamp generator read the same transcript.
Final thoughts
The best transcript reads like the person talking, without the ums.
Start at the clean level, read the Changes tab once, and save the tight level for transcripts that will be read like articles.
Transcript Cleaner FAQs
Questions about the transcript cleaner? Here's what to know.
A transcript cleaner is a tool that edits a raw transcript into readable text.
This transcript cleaner takes out timestamps and filler words, fixes punctuation, grammar and misheard names, and checks that nothing was dropped or made up.
Yes, the transcript cleaner is free, with no login.
The AI on the page has a daily limit, and you can always run the same job in your own AI for free.
Every part the AI cleans costs the site money, so a daily limit keeps the tool free for everyone.
It also stops bots from using it up.
Each person gets a set number of AI parts a day, and the site has a cap for everyone together.
Cleaning moves to your own AI, free: press Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok or Perplexity to take the prompt there, 1 part at a time, then paste the answer back to check it.
The quick clean, the downloads and the checks keep working, since they run in your browser.
The AI on the page comes back within a day.
Paste the transcript or drop the file into the transcript cleaner.
It takes out every timestamp in your browser, before any AI, and Download without AI saves the text right away.
Download the transcript file from your Zoom recording and drop it into the transcript cleaner.
It reads the speakers' names from the file and keeps them.
Yes, paste the video's link, press Get transcript, then press Clean my transcript.
YouTube's auto captions repeat each line as they roll, and the cleaner takes those repeats out.
No, it edits and never rewrites.
It keeps every point, story, example and number in the speaker's words, and the Changes tab shows every word it cut or added.
Yes, ChatGPT can clean a short transcript with a good prompt.
A long one needs splitting, and nothing checks what it dropped.
The transcript cleaner gives your AI the prompt part by part and checks each answer you paste back.
It finds names that sound like the words, from a list of over 800 tools, companies and creators, the speakers' names and the names you add.
The AI uses one only when the words clearly mean it, and every change is listed so you can undo it.
Yes, once it's clean, pick a language and press Translate.
On Chrome and Edge, your browser translates it on your device.
Elsewhere, the AI does it.
Your transcript is saved in this browser only, so it's there when you come back.
When the AI cleans it, each part goes to the AI and isn't kept.
The transcript cleaner is for podcasters, interviewers, course creators and teams who publish or share what was said.
It also helps researchers and students who work from recordings.
I did.
I'm Navid Moazzez, and the transcript cleaner is one of my free tools on navid.me.
Read more about me.
The YouTube video summarizer gives the main points of a video with the time each is said.
The podcast summarizer does the same for an episode, and the readability checker shows how easy your clean copy is to read.
See all my free tools.
Navid Moazzez
AI business strategist & AI OS builder
Navid Moazzez helps creators and founders master AI and build their own AI Operating System (AI OS) to automate their business and life.
Navid.me is reader-supported. When you buy through links on this site, I may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more.
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