Speech to text · العراقي

Iraqi Arabic audio to text, free

Upload a voice note, a call recording or a video and get Iraqi Arabic text back. It is free for files up to 2 minutes without an account (3 files a day); longer files need a free account. Download the result as text, Word or subtitles. Iraqi words come back as Iraqi (شلونكم, هسه, مالي), but expect spelling to shift towards standard Arabic, and check the small words.

MP3, M4A, WAV, WhatsApp .opus, MP4 · up to 2 min free

Upload a voice note, call recording or video in Iraqi Arabic, or record yourself. Free up to 2 minutes a file, 3 files a day, no account.

Valmiki STT

Your transcript appears here, exactly as Valmiki returns it.

Upload MP3, M4A, WAV, AAC, FLAC, AMR, a WhatsApp voice note (.opus or .ogg) or an MP4 or MOV video, or record up to 2 minutes from your microphone. Switch between Arabic script, Roman script and an English translation (made by Vyas, our language model, when you open the tab), then copy the text or download TXT or DOCX, plus SRT subtitles for uploaded files. No account needed for files up to 2 minutes, 3 a day.

Iraqi Arabic audio to text converter

Drop in an audio or video file and get Iraqi Arabic text back in Arabic script. It reads MP3, M4A, WAV, AAC, FLAC and AMR audio, WhatsApp voice notes (.opus and .ogg) and MP4 or MOV video, and the file is decoded on our server, so it works the same on an iPhone. You can also record from your microphone. There is no language menu: Valmiki STT, the speech recognition model behind it, works out that the speech is Iraqi Arabic, including English words in the middle of a sentence.

Free Iraqi Arabic speech to text: what you get

Files up to 2 minutes, 3 a day on each device, with no account.
With a free account, files up to 10 minutes and 10 MB each in the dashboard or the API, billed by the second.
The transcript in Iraqi Arabic, in Roman (English) letters, and translated into English.
Copy the text or download plain text (TXT) or Word (DOCX), and subtitles (SRT) for uploaded files.

Iraqi Arabic voice to text, saved as text, Word or subtitles

Copy the transcript, or download it as a TXT file or a Word document. For an uploaded file you also get an SRT subtitle file to load into YouTube Studio or a video editor. Long recordings after sign-up cost $0.00525 per minute of audio, billed by the second, the same for every language.

Real transcripts

What Valmiki STT returned for Iraqi Arabic.

Each sentence was read by Tariq, a Pāṇini TTS voice, and sent to Valmiki STT as a file: twice as the clean recording and twice as an 8 kHz phone-quality copy (squeezed down to 8 kHz and back, the way a phone line does it). The transcripts are shown exactly as they came back, errors included. Tested 25 October 2026. These are synthetic clips, not recorded calls.

Clean recordingReal output, 25 October 2026

What was said: هلو، شلونكم؟ الكارت مالي ما اشتغل من البارحة، وهسه ما أكدر أشحن الرصيد. شنو أسوي؟; Hello, how are you? My card hasn't worked since yesterday, and now I can't top up my balance. What do I do?
What Valmiki STT returned, unedited: هلو، شلونكم؟ الكارت مالي ما يشتغل من البارحة، وهسه ما أقدر أشحن الرصيد. شنسوي؟

One of two clean runs. Both clean runs changed the tense, ما يشتغل for ما اشتغل; the other also opened with هلا and wrote مالتي and شسوي.

Phone quality (8 kHz)Real output, 25 October 2026

What was said: هلو، شلونكم؟ الكارت مالي ما اشتغل من البارحة، وهسه ما أكدر أشحن الرصيد. شنو أسوي؟; Hello, how are you? My card hasn't worked since yesterday, and now I can't top up my balance. What do I do?
What Valmiki STT returned, unedited: هلو، شلونكم؟ الكارت مالتي ما اشتغل من البارحة، وهسة ما أقدر اشحن الرصيد. شنو اسوي؟

One of two phone-quality runs. The other opened with الو and differed only in spelling (البارحه, هسه, اقدر).

How to judge the accuracy yourself

No public benchmark includes Valmiki STT, so we do not publish a table comparing it with other services. Judge it on audio like yours instead. Play each clip above and compare what was said with what came back, word by word. Then upload a recording of your own that is close to what you will really transcribe: the same kind of phone line or microphone, the same speakers, the same mix of Iraqi Arabic and English. Count the words that changed meaning, not the spelling variants, and try the 8 kHz case if your audio comes from calls.

About Iraqi Arabic

How Iraqi Arabic speech comes out as text.

Iraqi Arabic sounds unlike Gulf or Levantine speech. Iraqis ask شلونكم؟ (how are you all?), say هسه for now, مالي for mine and أكدر for I can, where ق is spoken as a hard g. On our test sentence every run kept شلونكم, هسه and البارحة, and the meaning came through each time.

The weak point was small words and spelling. أكدر was written as the standard أقدر in all four runs. مالي (mine) came back as the feminine مالتي in three runs, and both clean runs ran شنو أسوي (what should I do) together as شنسوي or شسوي, which Iraqis also say but which is not what was spoken. One run heard هلو as الو, another as هلا.

Transcript script: Arabic script. Iraqi words are kept, but g-sounds written with ك in Iraqi spelling (أكدر) come back with ق (أقدر).
Language setting: None. Valmiki STT detects the spoken language, including switches mid-sentence.
Price after the free files: $0.00525 per minute of audio, billed by the second.
In local currency: About IQD 8 a minute (IQD 478 an hour of audio), at exchange rates from open.er-api.com, 25 October 2026.
Files: MP3, M4A, WAV, AAC, FLAC, AMR, WhatsApp .opus and .ogg, and MP4 or MOV video in the uploader. The API takes WAV, MP3, FLAC, OGG, Opus, WebM, AAC and M4A files up to 10 MB and 10 minutes.

Dialects and mixing

Baghdad, the south, Mosul, and the letters گ and چ.

Our test is Baghdad-style speech. Southern Iraqi from Basra shares much of it; Mosul and other northern cities speak a qeltu variety that keeps the q sound and sounds quite different. Valmiki STT has one Arabic language and no Iraqi setting, and we have not tested Mosul speech, so test it if your audio comes from the north.

Iraqi writers sometimes use the Persian letters گ and چ for the g and ch sounds (گال, چان). Valmiki STT did not produce them on our test; it wrote the standard ق instead. Kurdish, spoken in the Kurdistan Region, is a separate language that Valmiki STT's language list does not include, so this page covers Iraqi Arabic only.

Use cases

What people turn into Iraqi Arabic text.

WhatsApp voice notes to Iraqi Arabic text

Iraqi voice notes from family, a shop or a driver. Upload the .opus file and read the Arabic, or open the English tab to pass it on.

YouTube videos to Iraqi Arabic text

Iraqi podcasts, religious talks, comedy and news clips. For your own channel, download the MP4 from YouTube Studio and use the SRT file as a start on captions, then fix the dialect spellings you care about.

Interviews and meetings

Interviews for research, humanitarian work and journalism in Iraq, where people answer in dialect. Upload parts of up to 10 minutes after a free sign-up and download a Word file.

Call recordings

Telecom and top-up calls, like the one in our sample, and bank or delivery calls. Read what each caller reported instead of replaying the recording.

Voice typing

How to voice-type in Iraqi Arabic.

Voice typing is a different job from transcribing a file: you speak and the words appear as you go. Sonex Labs has no voice-typing keyboard or app, so for that, use the tools already on your phone or computer.

1. Android phone (Gboard)
Install Gboard, add Arabic under Languages in its settings and pick Iraq if it is listed, then tap the microphone on the keyboard.
2. iPhone
Add the Arabic keyboard in Settings, then General, Keyboard, Keyboards. If your iPhone offers dictation for Arabic, a microphone key appears on that keyboard.
3. WhatsApp
To type a message by voice, tap the microphone on your keyboard, not the voice-note button in WhatsApp; the keyboard writes the words into the chat box. WhatsApp can also show a transcript under a received voice message in some languages (Settings, then Chats, then Voice message transcripts). If Iraqi Arabic is not offered there, save the voice note and upload it above.
4. Microsoft Word
Word's Dictate lists Arabic only for Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as preview languages, and has no Iraqi option (checked October 2026).
5. Windows
Windows 11 voice typing does not list Arabic (checked October 2026). Google Docs voice typing in Chrome or Edge offers Arabic, though not an Iraq variant.

For recordings longer than a minute, use the uploader above.

API

Iraqi Arabic speech to text API.

Send a recording to POST /v1/transcribe and read the Iraqi Arabic text from the reply. There is no language parameter. $0.00525 per minute of audio, billed by the second.

transcribe.py

1# pip install requests
2import requests
3
4with open("iraqi-voice-note.ogg", "rb") as audio:
5    r = requests.post(
6        "https://api.sonexlabs.com/v1/transcribe",
7        headers={
8            "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY",
9            "Content-Type": "audio/wav",   # audio/mpeg, audio/ogg (WhatsApp notes), audio/mp4 ...
10        },
11        data=audio,
12    )
13r.raise_for_status()
14result = r.json()
15print(result["text"])              # هلو، شلونكم؟ الكارت مالي ما يشتغل ...
16print(result["duration_seconds"], "seconds of audio")

About IQD 8 a minute (IQD 478 an hour of audio), at exchange rates from open.er-api.com, 25 October 2026. Live streaming, limits and error codes are on the speech to text API page, and plans are on pricing.

FAQ

Iraqi Arabic speech to text, answered.

Yes, for short files. The uploader on this page turns Iraqi Arabic audio into text with no account for files up to 2 minutes, 3 files a day. For longer files, sign up free and transcribe files of up to 10 minutes and 10 MB each in the dashboard or through the API; that costs $0.00525 a minute, billed by the second, so a 10-minute recording costs about 5.25 US cents.

There is no app to install. The uploader works in the browser on a phone too: open this page on Android or iPhone, pick a voice note, recording or video from your files, and read the Iraqi Arabic text. For typing by voice as you speak, use your phone keyboard's microphone, as described in the voice-typing steps above.

Yes. It runs in a current browser: Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari on a Windows PC or a Mac, and Safari or Chrome on an iPhone or Android phone. Files are decoded on our server, so an iPhone voice memo, a WhatsApp .opus note or a MOV video works the same as on a PC. There is nothing to install.

Long-press the voice note in WhatsApp and share or export it to your files; on Android, received voice notes are also kept as .opus files in WhatsApp's media folder. Upload the .opus or .ogg file here and the Iraqi Arabic text appears. Notes up to 2 minutes need no account.

Upload the audio, then open the English tab above the transcript. Vyas, our language model, translates the Iraqi Arabic transcript when you open the tab, and you can copy it or download it like the transcript. Check names, amounts and dates against the Iraqi Arabic text, because a word misheard in Iraqi Arabic carries into the English.

Yes, in the uploader's Roman script tab, which writes the transcript in Latin letters. The API returns Arabic script.

Usable, with care. On our test sentence the meaning came through in every run, but spelling was pulled towards standard Arabic (أقدر for أكدر) and small words changed (مالتي for مالي). That is one sentence, not a benchmark; test recordings like yours and check names and numbers.

Without an account, 2 minutes per file and 3 files a day. With a free account, up to 10 minutes and 10 MB per audio file in the dashboard or the API, billed by the second. For anything longer, split the recording into parts of 10 minutes or less and send each one; the API takes the same limit.

Mostly Iraqi: شلونكم, هسه and البارحة stayed as spoken on our test. Some spellings were standardised, such as أكدر written أقدر, and the Persian letters گ and چ did not appear.

Other languages, and the other direction.

Need the reverse? Turn Iraqi Arabic text into speech with Pāṇini TTS, free to try without an account.

See speech to text in every language we have tested.

Turn your Iraqi Arabic audio into text.

Free for files up to 2 minutes without an account. Longer files, with a free account: $0.00525 per minute of audio, billed by the second.

Upload a file Valmiki STT API