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MP4 to MP3 Converter

A free MP4 to MP3 converter that runs online, in your browser: drop the video, keep MP3 or switch to WAV, and download the sound on its own. The MP4 is read and converted on your device, not uploaded, and you see its length and the file size before you start.

Drop your MP4 here or click to browse

MP4 or M4V, up to 500 MB and 30 minutes.

The video is converted in your browser and is not uploaded.

How to convert MP4 to MP3

Three steps, no software and no account.

  1. 1

    Drop the MP4

    Drag the video onto the converter or click to pick it. The converter reads the length first and shows the estimated MP3 size, so you know what you will get before anything is decoded. Up to 500 MB and 30 minutes.

  2. 2

    Keep MP3 and pick a bitrate

    MP3 is the default. 128 kbps suits most recordings; 64 or 96 kbps is plenty for speech and makes the smallest file; 192 or 320 kbps is for music. Switch to WAV only if an editor or a speech tool asks for it.

  3. 3

    Extract and download

    Press Extract audio, play the preview, then download. The MP3 keeps the video's name with an .mp3 ending, and nothing is stored anywhere when you close the page.

Have a MOV, WebM or MKV instead? The Video to Audio Converter takes every video format a browser can read.

Videos people turn into MP3s

Most of these are really recordings of someone talking. The picture is the big part of the file; the sound is what you need.

  • A phone video of a demo or plant tour

    You filmed the walk-through or the product demo on your phone to catch what the customer said. The MP3 is a tenth of the size or less, plays in the car, and is what a transcription tool wants.

  • A recorded webinar or training

    An hour of slides and a voice is an hour of audio. Pull the sound out to listen on a walk, or to keep a small copy without the video.

  • A screen recording of a call

    Zoom, Teams and Meet recordings and screen recordings land as MP4. Extract the audio to send a colleague who missed the call, or to transcribe it.

  • A voice note someone sent as a video

    A message recorded with the camera on, or a video with a black screen, is a voice note in an MP4. Convert it once and file it as the audio it is.

MP4 to WAV

The same converter turns an MP4 into a WAV: choose WAV under Save as, then a sample rate. A WAV is uncompressed 16-bit audio, the file audio editors, DAWs and some speech and research tools ask for, and it is much bigger than an MP3.

Pick 44.1 kHz for a music or podcast project at that rate, 48 kHz to match video editors, and 16 kHz for speech-to-text tools that ask for it: speech stays clear at about a third of the size of a 48 kHz file. Converting to WAV does not add quality; the video's AAC sound track has already been compressed, and the WAV stores what is left without further loss.

Sizes at a glance: a 30-minute MP4 gives about 302.8 MB of 44.1 kHz stereo WAV against about 27.5 MB of 128 kbps MP3. The table below has the rest.

Have an iPhone voice memo rather than a video? The M4A to WAV converter handles .m4a files, several at once.

MP4 vs MP3

The names look alike; the files are different things.

  • MP4 is a container, MP3 is audio

    An MP4 (or M4V) file holds a video track and a sound track, usually H.264 or HEVC video with AAC audio. An MP3 is a single compressed audio stream. Converting MP4 to MP3 keeps the sound track and drops the picture.

  • Lossy to lossy, barely audible on speech

    AAC and MP3 both drop what the ear is least likely to miss, so the MP3 is a re-encode of already compressed sound. At 128 kbps that is rarely audible on a voice recording; choose 192 or 320 kbps if the video has music you care about.

  • What stays the same

    The channels (mono or stereo) and the sample rate of the video's sound track carry over. The length is the video's length, and the MP3 plays anywhere: phones, car stereos, email attachments, CRM uploads and transcription tools.

How big the MP3 gets

An MP3's size depends only on its length and bitrate, not on the video's resolution. A 4K video and a 720p video of the same talk give the same MP3. The converter shows the estimate for your file before you convert.

Output1 minute10 minutes30 minutes
MP3 64 kbps469 KB4.6 MB13.7 MB
MP3 96 kbps703 KB6.9 MB20.6 MB
MP3 128 kbps938 KB9.2 MB27.5 MB
MP3 192 kbps1.4 MB13.7 MB41.2 MB
MP3 320 kbps2.3 MB22.9 MB68.7 MB
WAV 44.1 kHz stereo10.1 MB100.9 MB302.8 MB
WAV 16 kHz mono1.8 MB18.3 MB54.9 MB
MP3 bytes are bitrate × seconds ÷ 8; a WAV is sample rate × 2 bytes × channels × seconds. One MB here is 1,048,576 bytes.

HEVC videos and other MP4s that will not convert

The converter uses your browser's own decoder, so what converts depends on the browser. MP4 and M4V files with AAC sound, which is what phones, cameras and meeting apps save, converted in Chrome, Firefox and Safari in the parent page's test of 30 September 2026. A screen recording made without the microphone has no sound track and fails everywhere.

HEVC (H.265) is the High Efficiency format iPhones since the iPhone 7 record by default. Playing it is a browser limit, not ours: MDN notes that Chrome decodes HEVC only on devices with hardware support on Windows, Linux and ChromeOS (and on every Mac from macOS Big Sur), that Edge on Windows needs the HEVC Video Extensions from the Microsoft Store, and that Safari supports it on every Mac. On a Windows PC without that support the length may not show and the file may not convert.

If an HEVC video will not convert, export it as MP4 with H.264 first: in QuickTime Player on a Mac, Apple's steps are File > Export As and switching from Smaller File Size (HEVC) to Greater Compatibility (H.264). To record compatible videos from now on, Apple's setting is Settings > Camera > Formats > Most Compatible.

MP4 files with Dolby AC-3 sound decoded only in Safari in the same test. AVI, WMV and FLV files are not MP4 and no browser reads them: convert them to MP4 with a desktop tool such as VLC or HandBrake first.

Sources

Recording the demo or the meeting yourself? Read: how to record a meeting on iPhone, product demonstrations that sell, running a plant tour, technical presentations.

Pulling the audio out to listen back or transcribe it?

You filmed the demo or the meeting and now you want what was said. ParrotNotes records it on your phone and gives you the transcript, a summary and the action items without the conversion step, free for 100 minutes of recording a month. For the MP3 you just made, the free Audio to Text Converter transcribes files up to 10 minutes.

Get ParrotNotes free

Related tools

MP4 to MP3 FAQ