Hear2Text
For Researchers

Transcription for qualitative research, ready for coding

Interviews and focus groups come back as verbatim text in minutes, which keeps qualitative research transcription in step with the fieldwork. Upload the recording or paste a link, and the transcript arrives timestamped, split by speaker, and ready to export into whatever you analyze in.

Start Free - 120 Minutes WeeklyView Pricing

The gap between fieldwork and findings

Collecting the data is the part that goes to plan. Everything between the last interview and the first draft, the typing, the tidying, the hunt for a quote you half remember, is where the months quietly go.

  • Transcription eats the schedule

    An hour of recording takes most of a day to type out, and the person doing the typing is usually the one who knows the study best.

  • Coding by hand

    Before the text exists, a theme is a row in a spreadsheet holding a timecode and a paraphrase. The paraphrase is what ends up being quoted.

  • Every comparison means a replay

    Three participants said something similar about trust. Confirming that costs three sittings with headphones on, hoping you catch each moment again.

  • Quotes you cannot check

    A quotation has to match the recording word for word. Rebuilt from notes it drifts, and nothing points back to the moment a reviewer wants to see.

The transcript is waiting when you sit down to analyze

Upload the recording, or paste the link if the session was online, and the text comes back in minutes as timestamped segments with each speaker labeled. The work that is left is reading, coding and quoting, which is the work you were trained to do.

Verbatim transcription, from recorder to write-up

Before
  • ✗Record the interview
  • ✗Spend days transcribing
  • ✗Manually code in spreadsheets
  • ✗Struggle to cross-reference
  • ✗Risk citation errors
After
  • Record the interview
  • Get the transcript in minutes
  • AI-assisted theme identification
  • Search the text instead of replaying it
  • Accurate timestamped quotes

Research interview transcription, however it was recorded

An exported video call, a phone on a kitchen table, a lapel mic in a focus group room, a seminar someone sent you as a link. Upload the file or paste the link; the language is picked up automatically, out of 100 supported. Clear audio comes back at 95-99% accuracy, with a timestamp on every segment.

Get Started

Ask the transcript a question

The paid plan includes an assistant that has read the transcript and answers questions about it: where does she talk about workload, what did this participant say about leaving, summarize the last twenty minutes. It does not apply your codebook, and it is not meant to. It gets you to the passage worth coding without scrubbing the audio to find it.

Get Started

Cross-reference participants

Once every interview is text, finding each mention of a term is a search rather than a replay. Export the set to Word or TXT and that search runs across the whole study in the tool you already keep it in. Back in the transcript here, every line keeps its timestamp, so you can go back and hear the tone the text leaves out.

Get Started

Use Cases

  • Qualitative interviews

    Upload a semi-structured session the moment it ends and read it while it is still fresh, instead of typing out what you already heard. Every turn is timestamped, so a striking answer is one click away from the audio behind it.

  • Focus group transcription

    A table of voices around one microphone comes back with each turn on its own line, labeled by speaker. You still check the labels where people talk over each other, but you are correcting a transcript instead of writing one.

  • Thematic analysis

    Read the whole set as text, mark what recurs, and pull the passages that carry it. The assistant can point you at where a topic surfaces in a long session, and each theme you claim has a recording sitting behind it.

  • Literature review

    Recorded conference talks, seminars and methods webinars are sources too. Paste the video link and you have searchable text you can quote with a timecode, rather than an hour of video to scrub through for the line you remember.

  • Field research

    Record on a phone wherever the conversation happens and upload when you are back in signal. Because the language is picked up automatically, an interview in the local language does not have to wait for someone at home to type it.

Key Features

  • What you can tell your ethics board

    We do not claim to be IRB compliant, because approval attaches to your study and not to a vendor. What is true: encrypted transfer, files that stay in your account, and deletion whenever you decide.

  • Identifiers stay in your hands

    Nothing is redacted automatically: we do not strip names, places or any other identifier for you. Use participant IDs in the room, or clean the exported file before it goes to the rest of the team.

  • Exports your analysis tool can open

    No .qdpx and no native NVivo, ATLAS.ti or MAXQDA file. What you get is Word, PDF, TXT, SRT and VTT on the paid plan, and Word and plain text import cleanly into every one of those tools as a document you can code.

  • Word for word, not a summary

    What was said, word for word, at 95-99% accuracy on clear audio, and never replaced by a summary. Pauses are not marked and filler words may be dropped, so check the audio wherever your analysis codes them.

  • 100 languages, detected on upload

    Interview people in the language they think in. Detection happens when the file lands, so nothing has to be set per recording, and the paid plan can translate the finished text for co-authors who read another language.

  • Every line carries a timestamp

    A quote in your draft can be checked against the second it was spoken. When a reviewer asks where it came from, you have a place in the audio to point at rather than a memory of the room.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the service compliant with IRB requirements?
IRB approval covers your study, not your vendors, so no transcription service can be compliant on your behalf and we do not claim to be. What you can put in the protocol: recordings travel over an encrypted connection, they sit in your account and are shared only if you share them, and you can delete a recording and its transcript whenever you want. If your approval requires that data never leave university-controlled systems, transcribe it there instead.
Can I anonymize participant information?
No. There is no automatic anonymization or redaction, and we would rather say so than let you find out after the upload. Whatever is spoken in the recording, names included, appears in the transcript. The usual practice still works: use participant IDs during the interview, or find and replace names in the exported Word or TXT file before the transcript joins your analysis set.
Can I export transcripts to qualitative analysis software?
Yes, as Word or plain text, though not in a native format: there is no .qdpx file, and nothing that opens directly in NVivo, ATLAS.ti or MAXQDA. The paid plan exports Word, PDF, TXT, SRT and VTT, and the free plan exports TXT. Word and plain text are what those tools import, so the route is export the transcript, import it as a document, and code it there. On the paid plan the Word and TXT files can open each turn with the speaker's name; the timestamps stay in the transcript here, so keep it open when you need to hear a line.
How does it handle focus groups with overlapping speech?
Speaker identification separates the voices and labels each segment, on the free plan as well as the $9.99/month one. Clean turn-taking it handles well; where three people talk at once, expect to correct a few labels yourself, which is still a reading pass rather than a typing pass. One microphone in the middle of the table beats one at the end of it, and that choice affects the result more than anything on our side does.
How do I transcribe interviews for qualitative research?
Record each interview, upload the file or paste the link, and export the transcript as TXT, or as Word on the paid plan, to code in the tool you already use. The language is detected automatically out of 100 languages, so a multilingual study does not need a setting changed file by file, and clear audio comes back at 95-99% accuracy with a timestamp on every segment. Speakers are separated on every plan, and the paid plan also translates a finished transcript, which helps when the analysis team does not share the interview language.
Is there a discount for academic researchers?
No. There is no academic, student or institutional discount, and the price is the same for everyone. The free plan is what carries a thesis budget: 120 transcription minutes every week, resetting each Monday, with no credit card. Beyond that it is $9.99 a month for unlimited minutes, or $89.99 a year, which works out at about $7.50 a month.

Transcribe your next qualitative interview for free

The free plan's 120 minutes cover two interviews of an hour each, this week and every week after, with no credit card. Unlimited minutes, speaker names, AI summaries and every export format are $9.99 a month, or $89.99 a year.

Start Free - 120 Minutes WeeklyView Pricing