Word for word, and letter for letter.
Your interviews, transcribed — so you get your time back for the work that matters.
From raw recording to a finished, anonymised transcript — reviewed line by line against the audio, by a person, in the UK.
Try it free, no obligation
Send me a 15-minute section from a real recording. I’ll return it fully transcribed, anonymised and formatted — free.
Email me the file, the project’s rough audio hours, and your deadline.
The Data Processing Agreement is signed before you send anything — including the free transcript. Paperwork first, always.
Speaker labels, timestamps, anonymisation and honest [unclear] flags come as standard — so you check the flagged bits, not everything.
How it works
Four steps. No upload form, no cloud, no data leaving the country.
You email me
Tell me about the recording — length, number of speakers, the turnaround you need.
You choose the transfer route
Your institution’s own secure file transfer, whatever you’re already approved to use — never email attachments or consumer file-sharing. No approved route? We agree an encrypted one in writing first.
Processed locally
Everything happens on one UK machine. Your participants’ voices never touch a third-party cloud.
Returned ready to use
Anonymised, speaker-labelled, formatted — with honest [unclear] flags where they belong.
About
I built this because I needed it.
I studied psychology, and my dissertation ran on qualitative interviews. I transcribed every one of them myself — evenings, weekends, the week before a deadline. Then I kept doing it, as a research assistant, on other people’s projects.
So I know what a transcript needs to be: anonymised properly, formatted so it opens in NVivo ready to code, and honest about what was genuinely unclear.
It’s the service I wanted when I was doing this myself.
Monty Franks
Why researchers choose Localscript
Built to meet your institution’s data rules — natively.
University guidance is strict: an external transcription service should be UK-based, never send data outside the UK, use encrypted and password-protected transfers, store data securely, and have the right agreements in place before any identifiable data moves.
A local-first pipeline — once your audio reaches me, it’s processed and stored on a single UK machine, never the cloud — satisfies all of it. Fast turnaround at or below market rates, with anonymisation, the key, the log and analysis-ready formatting included rather than quoted separately.
Storage and deletion
- Full-disk encryption — everything encrypted at rest
- Encrypted transfers in both directions
- Encrypted backup held in the UK, never a third-party cloud
- Audio and transcripts deleted 30 days after delivery, or on request at any point
UK-based
Run in the UK, by a person you can email. No offshore handoff.
Stays on one machine
Once it reaches me, your audio is processed and stored on one UK machine — never uploaded to a third-party cloud.
Agreements first
The Data Processing Agreement is signed before any audio moves. Where your institution requires its own Data Sharing Agreement, I’ll sign that too.
Ethics-friendly
You use the transfer route your institution already approves. Nothing new to get signed off.
One person, named
Larger providers route work through pools of hundreds. Here, one named person does the work and signs your agreement. You know exactly who has heard the recording.
Every policy and agreement we operate under is published in full → Policies and Agreements
Lands in your analysis software, not your inbox.
Transcripts arrive as .docx formatted for direct import into NVivo, ATLAS.ti or MAXQDA — consistent speaker labels per paragraph, consistent timestamp format, no reformatting before you can start coding. If the project has its own template, that is matched.
Anonymisation
Anonymisation, priced openly.
No UK transcription provider publishes what anonymisation costs — it is quoted bespoke, on request, or not mentioned at all. Localscript includes it in the rate, not quoted separately.
Before
“I moved to Leeds in 2019 to work at the Trust with Dr Hammond.”
After
“I moved to [City A] in 2019 to work at [NHS Trust B] with [Colleague C].”
What you get
Personal names, place names, organisations and other identifying details replaced with consistent pseudonyms throughout.
The re-identification key
Held separately and securely, so you can link back to participants when your protocol requires it.
The anonymisation log
A record of what was changed and to what — the document your ethics committee asks for.
Consistent across the project
The same pseudonym in every transcript, so your codes stay comparable across interviews.
Pricing
Honest, per-minute pricing. You pick the turnaround.
+ Need strict verbatim? Every filler word, repetition and false start captured as spoken — for projects where exact phrasing matters. Rates below.
Same inclusions as the standard grid — anonymisation, key, log, formatting and timestamps all included. Prices are final — no VAT to add.
Intelligent verbatim is the default and suits most qualitative analysis. If you’re unsure which you need, say what you’re doing with the transcript and I’ll tell you.
Every rate includes
- Anonymisation, re-identification key and anonymisation log
- NVivo / ATLAS.ti / MAXQDA-ready formatting
- Timestamps and consistent speaker labels
- Intelligent verbatim
- No surcharge for regional or second-language accents
- No surcharge for background noise
No VAT to add. The price you see is the price you pay — worth comparing against VAT-registered providers, where 20% goes on top.
Free corrections within 14 days. And if a file is too poor to transcribe reliably, I tell you before starting and don’t charge for it.
Purchase orders accepted, 30 day terms. For multi-file studies, tell me the volume and deadline and I’ll confirm a schedule up front.
Who it’s for
Made for people with a live interview project and no time to lose.
Grant-funded academics
Working to ethics approval and institutional data rules, with real deadlines and budget to protect your own time.
Freelance researchers
Doing the fieldwork yourself and tired of losing evenings to transcription.
Small agencies
Needing dependable, compliant transcription you can hand to a client with confidence.
Send me 15 minutes. See the transcript for yourself.
The free first transcript is the proof — no borrowed logos, no invented testimonials, you judge the quality yourself before anything else is on the table.
Agreements signed before any audio moves.
Prefer to talk it through first? Grab a quick, no-pressure call — we’ll figure out whether it’s a fit.