Best of

Best Arabic transcription tools, ranked by what they state

Many tools list Arabic; few say which Arabic. This list ranks tools on five things their own pages state: Arabic named, a dialect or variant stated, a free route that covers Arabic, a subtitle file, and an accuracy figure. Sonix scores highest with 5 of 5, but those are vendor statements: nobody here, including us, has run a neutral dialect test across these tools. Checked on 2026-10-27.

Updated 2026-10-27

The ranking

#	Tool	Arabic named	Dialects stated	Free route	SRT/VTT stated	Accuracy stated	Score	What its page says
1	Sonix	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	5 of 5	Its Arabic page names MSA, Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, Iraqi and Maghrebi and claims an accuracy range of 85 to 99 percent (its own claim); 30 free minutes; SRT and VTT stated on its pricing page.
2	TryScriptorium	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	4 of 5	Arabic interface and landing pages. We make no dialect claim. Our own measurement: 31.8% word error rate for the small model on 3 clips of Egyptian read speech, method on the measurements page; conversational speech and other dialects are not measured.
3	ElevenLabs Scribe v2	Yes	No	Yes	Not stated	Yes	3 of 5	Arabic is in its "Good" band (over 10% to 20% word error rate); no dialect statement; free allowance differs between its pages; export formats not named.
4	Gemini 3.5 Transcribe (developer API)	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Not stated	3 of 5	Lists only Arabic (Egypt) among 85+ locales; free on the API free tier; no subtitle formats mentioned; developer API, not a web app.
5	Happy Scribe	Yes	Not stated	Yes	Yes	Not stated	3 of 5	Arabic is in its language list; its Arabic page is for its human service, which names country variants; AI dialect coverage is not stated there.
6	Maestra	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Not stated	3 of 5	Arabic has its own page; only a general "125+ languages and dialects"; a 1-minute free trial; SRT and VTT mentioned.
7	Notta	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Not stated	3 of 5	Has an Arabic speech-to-text page; the free web tool takes one file up to 5 minutes; SRT is a Pro export; no Arabic dialect claim.
8	Narakeet	Yes	No	Yes	Not stated	Not stated	2 of 5	Arabic listed; 20 free files of up to 10 minutes; no registration; transcript download is a text file.
9	SubEasy	Yes	No	Yes	Not stated	Not stated	2 of 5	Arabic listed with three country flags and no dialect claim; "3 x 30 mins" free every day.
10	Transkriptor	Yes	Not stated	Not stated	Yes	Not stated	2 of 5	Arabic is in its language list; its pages disagree about the free allowance; SRT/VTT stated.
11	Descript	No	No	No	Yes	No	1 of 5	Its help centre says transcription is limited to the Latin alphabet; SRT and VTT export is described.
12	Otter.ai	No	No	No	Yes	No	1 of 5	Arabic is not among its six AI transcription languages; SRT is a paid export.
13	Rev	No	No	No	Not stated	No	0 of 5	Arabic appears only in its human subtitles list, not AI transcription.

Checked on 2026-10-27. A vendor's accuracy or dialect claim is quoted as its claim. Sonix's 85-to-99-percent range and ElevenLabs' "Good" band come from their own pages and are not comparable with each other or with our measurement, which uses different audio. Dialect claims across the market are unbenchmarked; see which Arabic dialects do speech-to-text tools list.

Not listed: Riverside's free tool does not name Arabic on the page we read; the local Whisper apps (Buzz, Vibe, MacWhisper) do not name Arabic either, although Whisper-based tools can transcribe it. Not ranked because we could not read the page: TurboScribe (all four pages we tried returned HTTP 403 on 2026-10-27) and the ChatGPT app's audio features (OpenAI's help-centre pages returned HTTP 403). A tool missing from a list is not a verdict on it.

How to choose for Arabic

Set the language to Arabic yourself rather than relying on detection, especially for short or noisy clips.
Name the dialect to yourself. Modern Standard Arabic news speech and an Egyptian phone call are different jobs. Where a vendor lists dialects, test one minute of your own audio.
For subtitles, check that the tool exports SRT or VTT and that your player shows Arabic punctuation on the correct side: see the SRT punctuation fixer.
For confidential audio, see the private list.

TryScriptorium, honestly

On this list's criteria it has Arabic named, a free route and SRT/VTT, and it states one measured accuracy number with its method: 31.8% word error rate for the small model on 3 clips of Egyptian read speech (see the measurements page). That is read speech, not conversation, and it is not a dialect claim; we make none. Our weaknesses, plainly: guests get the small model; the no-account preview is limited to one file of 15 minutes and 25 MB, 3 tries a day; there is no link input (you upload a file); there is no DOCX export in the app (open the TXT in Word, or convert it with the free browser tool at /tools/transcript-to-docx); it does not join live calls and has no live captions; and the transcripts are automatic and make mistakes. Arabic is also the language where our guest model is weakest, so for important Arabic audio read every line.

How we ranked

Five criteria, fixed before we filled in the table. Each cell is Yes only when the vendor's own page, read on 2026-10-27, says so; No when it says the opposite; Not stated otherwise, which scores nothing. The score is the number of Yes cells and ties are listed alphabetically. This ranks what products state, not how well they transcribe: we have not tested the other tools on your audio, and a transcript from any of them needs reading against the recording.

Arabic named by the vendor
States which Arabic dialect or variant it covers
A free route that covers Arabic, as stated
SRT or VTT export stated (any plan)
States an Arabic accuracy figure or band on its own page (a vendor claim, not a test)

We make TryScriptorium, so it is in the table and scored by the same rules. We chose criteria that matter to someone who wants a free transcript fast, which is also what we built, so weigh our own placement with the most caution. Prices and limits change; the source links are below and each is worth a click before you decide.

Sources

Every row about another product was read on that product's own page on 2026-10-27. Where a page contradicted itself the cell says so.

Questions

Which tool is best for Arabic transcription?

On what vendors state, Sonix scores highest (5 of 5 on 2026-10-27), but those are claims. No neutral benchmark compares these tools across dialects, so test a minute of your own audio.

Does Otter support Arabic?

Its pricing page, read on 2026-10-27, lists AI transcription in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese; Arabic is not listed.

Is there a free Arabic transcription tool with no sign-up?

TryScriptorium takes one Arabic file up to 15 minutes and 25 MB without an account. Narakeet's page says no registration and lists Arabic, with 20 files of up to 10 minutes. Limits change.

Do any of these tools support Arabic dialects?

Sonix's Arabic page names Modern Standard, Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, Iraqi and Maghrebi. Google's Gemini 3.5 Transcribe docs list Arabic (Egypt). Most others name no dialect. All of these are claims, not tests.

How accurate is TryScriptorium for Arabic?

On 3 clips of Egyptian read speech, the small model had a 31.8% word error rate. That is one narrow test; conversational and other-dialect audio will differ.

Try it with your own file

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