Web Captioner
Free in-browser real-time captioning powered by your browser's speech recognition.
Drop your audio. Transcript in seconds. First transcript free, then $4 = 300 min
What Whipscribe can do for you instead
Whipscribe transcribes a recording you already have — a sermon, lecture, stream VOD, webinar or interview — and returns a speaker-labelled transcript plus SRT and VTT caption files ready to upload to YouTube or a web player. It is not a live captioner: it works on the file after the event, not on speech as it happens.
Web Captioner shut down on 2026-08-07. Vendor notice.
If you need captions live, as someone speaks
- Chrome's built-in Live Caption — Chrome settings, Accessibility, Live Caption. Captions any audio playing in the browser, offline, free.
- Google Meet and Google Slides both caption speech live during a call or presentation.
- Self-host Web Captioner itself — the author open-sourced it in 2023 and the code is still on GitHub to fork and run.
Best for churches, events, classrooms projecting live captions from a laptop with zero setup. Pricing: Discontinued — 'Web Captioner has sunset'.
What it is
Web Captioner was a free open-source web app that captioned whatever the microphone heard, live, in the browser. It has been discontinued: webcaptioner.com now redirects to the creator's personal site with the notice 'Web Captioner has sunset', and the source code (archived November 2023) remains available on GitHub for anyone who wants to fork it. If you landed here looking for a working replacement for live captions or transcription, the tools below are the current options.
Watch out for: Relies on the browser's Web Speech API (Chrome ships Google's cloud recognizer by default) — audio is sent to Google. Accuracy varies by mic and environment.
Install / use
Go to Web Captioner webcaptioner.comFeatures
| Speaker diarization | No |
| Word-level timestamps | No |
| Streaming / real-time | Yes |
| Languages supported | 40 |
| HIPAA eligible | No |
Web Captioner vs Whipscribe
| Feature | Web Captioner | Whipscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Products | Transcription APIs |
| Pricing | Not verified | $4–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · $2 single unlock · 60 min free on signup |
| Speaker diarization | Not verified | Yes |
| Word timestamps | Not verified | Yes |
| Streaming | Not verified | No |
| Languages | 40 | 99 |
| Platforms | Web, Chrome | Web, API, MCP |
Alternatives to Web Captioner
Frequently asked about Web Captioner
Is Web Captioner still available?
No — Web Captioner shut down on 2026-08-07. Whipscribe transcribes a recording you already have — a sermon, lecture, stream VOD, webinar or interview — and returns a speaker-labelled transcript plus SRT and VTT caption files ready to upload to YouTube or a web player. It is not a live captioner: it works on the file after the event, not on speech as it happens. Vendor notice: https://webcaptioner.com/.
What happened to Web Captioner?
Web Captioner shut down on 2026-08-07. Whipscribe transcribes a recording you already have — a sermon, lecture, stream VOD, webinar or interview — and returns a speaker-labelled transcript plus SRT and VTT caption files ready to upload to YouTube or a web player. It is not a live captioner: it works on the file after the event, not on speech as it happens. Vendor notice: https://webcaptioner.com/.
What can I use instead of Web Captioner?
Whipscribe transcribes a recording you already have — a sermon, lecture, stream VOD, webinar or interview — and returns a speaker-labelled transcript plus SRT and VTT caption files ready to upload to YouTube or a web player. It is not a live captioner: it works on the file after the event, not on speech as it happens. If you need captions appearing live as someone speaks, these still work: Chrome's built-in Live Caption — Chrome settings, Accessibility, Live Caption. Captions any audio playing in the browser, offline, free.; Google Meet and Google Slides both caption speech live during a call or presentation.; Self-host Web Captioner itself — the author open-sourced it in 2023 and the code is still on GitHub to fork and run..
Whipscribe is a managed faster-whisper + whisperX service. If you want transcripts without running infrastructure, paste a URL or drop a file in the form below — you'll have a transcript in seconds.