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Sermon transcription.Recorded service to searchable text.

Drop a Sunday service recording — pulpit mic, live-stream rip, or YouTube URL. Get a speaker-labeled transcript with Scripture references intact, in 100+ languages.

Drop a file, or pick one

MP3 · WAV · M4A · MP4 · MOV · MKV · OGG · OPUS · FLAC · WEBM — up to 100 MB anonymously

Paste a link, we’ll fetch the audio

YouTube · TikTok · Vimeo · Twitter · SoundCloud · Spotify · 50+ more

Record straight from your browser

Sign up takes 30 seconds — recording opens right after, in the dashboard.

No card required~90s per 60-min fileSRT · VTT · DOCX · TXTFiles auto-deleted in 24h

↓ Watch what comes out

Service recording in. Study-ready text out.

Most churches record a single pulpit mic plus an ambient room feed. We treat the pulpit channel as the primary speaker, suppress congregational noise, and keep amens and responsive readings on a separate label.

Sunday service · MP3REC Pastor + congregation · 38:42
auto-detected en-US44.1 kHz mono · 192 kbps
~90s
Transcript · streaming95% accuracy
S1

Turn with me to Romans chapter 8, verse 28 — and we'll read through 30 together.

S2

Amen.

S1

Paul says, 'And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good.'

S1

Now hear me — all things. Not some things. All things.

95% on pulpit-mic audioDOCX · SRT · TXT · JSON

↓ This is the dashboard

This is what loads when the job finishes.

Same layout as the real dashboard — Summary, full Transcript, Speakers tab, Exports. Key points and action items extracted automatically. Auto-tags on every job.

Try it on your own file — it's free

Three real options · honest comparison

YouTube captions. Rev human typists. Or us.

If you upload the service to YouTube, you get auto-captions for free — they're rough. Rev sends it to a human and bills $1.50/min. We sit in the middle: AI accuracy near-human on pulpit audio, priced like the free tools.

Option 01

YouTube auto-captions

Free with upload. No speaker labels, no Scripture formatting, English-leaning.

RequiresPublic/unlisted YouTube upload
Speaker labelsNone
Scripture refsSpelled phonetically
ExportSRT/VTT only
Languages~13, EN best
CostFree
Best forChurches that just need rough captions on the livestream and edit nothing afterward.
Option 02

Transcription.Solutions

Drop the file or paste the YouTube URL. Scripture references kept, congregation separated.

RequiresFile or public URL
Speaker labelsPastor + responders
Scripture refsCustom vocabulary hint
ExportDOCX · SRT · TXT · JSON
Languages100+, auto-detected
Cost · per min$0.03
Best forChurches publishing weekly devotionals, study guides, show notes, or website sermon archives.
Option 03

Rev human typing

A person types it. Highest accuracy, slowest turnaround, expensive at sermon length.

RequiresFile upload + wait
Speaker labelsYes (manual)
Scripture refsDepends on typist
Turnaround12-24 hours
LanguagesEN + ~30, varies
Cost · per min$1.50
Best forOne-off transcripts for print publication where every word must be verified by a human.

Pricing approximate as of 2026. YouTube caption language list and Rev pricing tiers change without notice.

Specific to sermons

Three things that bite churches on generic transcription tools.

Sermons are not meetings. The vocabulary, the cadence, and the room are all different — flip these and the transcript stops looking like nonsense.

What goes wrong

  1. 1Scripture references come out wrong. 'Second Corinthians chapter 5' becomes '2nd Corinthian's chapter 5.' Book names like Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Philemon are phonetic guesses.
  2. 2Hebrew and Greek words (chesed, agape, shalom, koinonia) get force-translated into nearest English homophones. The exegetical point dies.
  3. 3Rhetorical repetition ('Look at it. Look at it. Look at it again.') gets de-duplicated as a stutter by tools tuned for business meetings.

What to flip here

  1. 1Paste the 66 book names plus your preacher's recurring vocabulary (theologians cited, ministry names, member names) into Custom vocabulary on the job form. We bias the recognizer toward them.
  2. 2Turn filler-word removal off for sermons. The pauses and repetitions are intentional rhetoric — removing them flattens the message.
  3. 3Use the two-speaker preset: pastor as s1, congregational responses ('Amen', responsive readings) collapsed under s2. Keeps the transcript readable instead of fragmenting on every 'Amen.'

Recommended job settings for sermons

Drop a sermon file and these flip on by default. Override per-job from the form.

Diarization
2 speakers (pastor + room)
Speaker model
Monologue · single primary voice
Language
Auto-detect · 100+ supported
Filler words
Kept (rhetorical pauses preserved)
Custom vocabulary
Bible books + preacher's terms
Export
DOCX (study guide) · SRT (captions)

Accuracy · real-world numbers

95% on pulpit audio. Drops on hand-held mics and room recordings.

The ceiling is set by what your sound booth captured. A direct feed from the pulpit lavalier is the best case; a phone on the back pew is the worst. Numbers below come from real customer sermon files, not synthetic benchmarks.

95%+
Direct soundboard feed

Pulpit lav or headset mic, mixed clean and pulled from the board. The preacher's voice isolated, no room reflections.

93%
Live-stream audio (YouTube/Vimeo)

Compressed but mixed by the booth. Slight loss on consonants from AAC encoding. Most sermons land here.

89%
Handheld or roaming mic

Q&A or congregation prayer where the mic passes around. Some words clip when the mic moves off-axis.

82%
Phone in the back pew

Room recording from a single device. Echo, AC hum, distance from the preacher. Usable for study, expect a cleanup pass.

Common questions

8 things people ask about sermon transcription.

01Can I import directly from our church YouTube channel?+
Yes. Paste any public or unlisted YouTube URL on the upload form and we pull the audio. Works with Vimeo, Facebook Live archives, and most podcast hosts (Buzzsprout, Podbean, Spreaker) too.
02Will Scripture references be formatted correctly?+
Not automatically — we transcribe what's spoken, so 'Romans eight twenty-eight' comes out as words. Add Bible book names to Custom vocabulary and we'll spell them right. A short find-and-replace pass converts 'eight twenty-eight' to '8:28' if you need citation format.
03Does it handle bilingual services (English + Spanish, or with an interpreter)?+
Yes. Our recognizer auto-detects language switches mid-sermon and labels each segment. For services with a live interpreter on a second mic, upload as stereo and we'll keep both languages on separate channels.
04What about Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic words the preacher quotes?+
Add them to Custom vocabulary before the job runs (chesed, agape, shalom, eschaton, etc.) and we bias the recognizer toward those tokens. Without the hint, they default to English homophones — 'agape' becomes 'a gap, eh.'
05Can we use this for closed captions on our livestream?+
For recorded sermons posted after the service, yes — export SRT or VTT and upload alongside the video. For live captions during the broadcast we don't have a real-time streaming endpoint yet. Use YouTube's auto-captions live, then replace with our SRT once the recording is up.
06How long does a 45-minute sermon take to transcribe?+
Usually 3-5 minutes of processing for the full file. Longer if you've queued multiple services (Sunday morning + evening + Wednesday Bible study). Drafts stream into the editor as the job runs so you can start reviewing before it finishes.
07Do you redact prayer requests or private member names?+
Not automatically — we transcribe verbatim. The editor has find-and-replace and a redaction tool you can run after, which is the standard workflow for pastoral counseling recordings and prayer request segments.
08Can I get the transcript formatted as a study guide or devotional?+
The AI summary on every plan generates an outline, key points, and Scripture references list from the transcript — usable as a study-guide skeleton. It's not a finished devotional, but it cuts the writing time by an hour.

Drop last Sunday's recording. See what comes out.

30 free minutes every month. No card. Speaker labels, 100+ languages, all exports included.

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