ALL AUDIO TOOLS18
FLAC to MP3
Convert FLAC to MP3 Online — Free & Private
Turn lossless FLAC files into MP3s that play on any phone, car stereo or media player.
Nothing is enforced, but the FLAC is decoded to 32-bit float in this tab — roughly four times its own size, and once to draw the waveform before the conversion decodes it again — so a full album-length file can exhaust memory.
About FLAC to MP3
FLAC is what you rip a CD to when you never want to make that decision again: it compresses audio without discarding any of it, so what comes back out is bit-for-bit the recording that went in. The cost is size — a FLAC album typically runs 250 to 400 MB — and a lot of the places you actually listen to music will not open the format at all. Older car head units, cheap MP3 players, console media apps, plenty of Bluetooth receivers and most upload forms want MP3. This tool decodes the FLAC and encodes an MP3 from it at the bitrate you choose. That is a real trade and worth stating plainly: FLAC is lossless, MP3 is not, so the output is smaller and permanently lossier than the source, and converting back will not undo it. What makes this the honest version of that trade is where you are starting from. A 320 kbps MP3 made from a lossless master is about as good as MP3 gets — one generation of loss, applied to audio that has none — while the same MP3 made from another lossy file is a second generation stacked on a first. Keep the FLAC files as the archive and treat the MP3s as copies for the devices that need them. The decode and the encode both run in this tab, through the Web Audio API and the lamejs encoder, so the music never leaves your device.
Questions
Does converting FLAC to MP3 lose quality?
Yes, and permanently. FLAC keeps every sample; MP3 discards the parts of the sound its model considers inaudible. What makes this the good version of that trade is the starting point — a 320 kbps MP3 made from a lossless master is one generation of loss applied to audio that had none, which is about as good as MP3 gets. Keep the FLAC files as your archive.
What bitrate should I use for music?
320 kbps if you are converting a lossless archive and want the copy to be as close to transparent as MP3 allows. 256 kbps is very hard to tell apart on most equipment and saves about 20% more space. Anything below 192 kbps starts to be audible on dense music, and there is little reason to go there when the source is FLAC.
How much smaller will the MP3 be?
A FLAC album typically runs 250 to 400 MB. The same music at 320 kbps is about 2.4 MB per minute, so roughly 70 to 90 MB — usually a quarter to a third of the FLAC. At 192 kbps it is about half that again.
Can I convert the MP3 back to FLAC afterwards?
You can produce a FLAC file from it, but it will not restore anything. FLAC is lossless about whatever it is given, so encoding an MP3 to FLAC preserves the already-degraded audio at a much larger size. The information MP3 discarded is gone. Convert from the FLAC every time you need a new copy rather than from a previous MP3.
Are my tags and cover art kept?
No. The conversion works on decoded audio, so artist, album, track number and embedded artwork are all dropped — the MP3 you get back carries the sound and nothing else. Re-tag it in your music player or a tag editor afterwards. This is true of every audio converter here, not just this one.
Does this download an engine to read FLAC?
Usually not. Most browsers decode FLAC natively through the Web Audio API. Where one cannot, the tool falls back to an FFmpeg build served from this site — a one-time download of roughly 31 MB, cached afterwards, never fetched from a CDN — and you get the same MP3 out.
Is my file uploaded to a server?
No. Transmute processes everything locally in your browser using JavaScript and WebAssembly. Your files never leave your device — there is no server, no upload, no cloud processing.