· The first conversion downloads the FFmpeg engine (about 32 MB). It is cached afterwards.
· Keep files under 2 GB, and under a few hundred MB if you are on a phone or re-encoding video.
· Keep this tab in the foreground — browsers throttle background tabs and the conversion will pause.
How to convert MP4 to MP3 in 3 steps
1
Add your MP4 file
Drop in a .mp4 (or .m4v) file from a download, a phone camera, a screen recording or a video export.
2
Choose the MP3 bitrate
192 kbps is the default and suits most video audio. Use 320 kbps for music and 128 kbps for speech-only footage where size matters.
3
Extract the audio
Press Convert. FFmpeg reads the audio track, discards the video stream without decoding it, and hands you a downloadable MP3.
About MP4 and MP3
Why MP4 is the video format you actually meet
MP4 is the container of the modern web: phone recordings, YouTube downloads, screen captures, Zoom and Meet exports, camera footage and almost every video file that arrives by email or messaging app is an MP4 carrying H.264 video with AAC audio. That ubiquity is exactly why so many people end up hunting for an MP4 to MP3 converter — the video was the packaging, and the part they actually want is the sound inside it.
What extraction does, and what it leaves out
This tool copies nothing and re-encodes only what is needed. The video stream is dropped before it is ever decoded, so the pixels in your MP4 are never touched and the conversion takes seconds instead of minutes — a 700 MB video becomes a 10 MB MP3 without your CPU breaking a sweat. The audio is decoded from its original AAC and encoded to MP3 at the bitrate you choose. Subtitles, chapter markers and camera metadata are not carried over; if you need those, you want a subtitle tool rather than an audio converter.
The situations that send people here
Turning a lecture, conference talk or webinar recording into something you can listen to while driving or walking. Ripping the music track from a concert video for a personal playlist. Keeping just the spoken part of a screen recording instead of a file too heavy to send. Saving an interview for transcription. Trimming a camera clip down to its audio so it fits in a chat app. In each case the video is irrelevant, and an MP3 is roughly a twentieth of the size.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert MP4 to MP3 for free?
Add the MP4 file to the box at the top of this page, choose a bitrate and press Convert. It is free, needs no account and applies no watermark or time limit.
Will the audio quality drop?
Only slightly. MP4 audio is normally AAC, and MP3 is also lossy, so you lose a small amount of detail in the re-encode. At 192 kbps and above it is hard to hear on normal equipment; pick 320 kbps if the source is music.
My MP4 has no sound in the output — why?
Some MP4 files carry no audio track at all, or hold a codec the browser build of FFmpeg cannot decode. Play the original file first to confirm it has working audio before converting.
Can I extract audio from a long video?
Yes. Extraction is the cheapest operation here because the video is never decoded. Files up to about 2 GB work; hour-long recordings finish in seconds on a desktop.
Is the video deleted or uploaded anywhere?
No. Your browser reads the file and converts it on your own machine, and the original video on your disk is never modified. Nothing is sent to a server.
What about MP4 files inside other containers?
A .mov or .m4v holding the same H.264 and AAC streams works exactly the same way — the MOV to MP3 and M4A to MP3 tools cover those, and all three share this extraction engine.
More conversions
Every tool below runs in your browser with the same no-upload guarantee.