Convert FLAC to MP3 in your browser

For the phone, the car or the player that will not take lossless. Your FLAC is untouched, so this is a first lossy pass and 256 is genuinely transparent.

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FLAC to MP3 options

Bitrate (kbps) 256

Your FLAC is lossless, so nothing has been discarded yet and this is the only pass. 256 is where all but a handful of listeners stop being able to tell on any equipment. 320 costs a quarter more for a difference nobody has reliably demonstrated; 192 is fine for a phone in a noisy place.

Downmix to mono Off

One channel instead of two. Almost never right for music, which is what FLAC usually holds. Leave it off unless the recording is a single-microphone spoken word piece.

Strip tags and cover art Off

Off by default, and worth leaving off. A FLAC from a rip or a purchase carries the artist, album, track number and often the cover art, and a music library that receives MP3s without them is a mess to fix later.

Convert to a target size Off

MP3 size is bitrate times duration, so we work the bitrate out from the length of the track. Useful for fitting an album onto a player with a fixed capacity.

How to convert FLAC to MP3

01

Drop the FLAC files

A track, an album, or the whole library folder. Nothing is uploaded, so the size of the batch is between you and your laptop fan.

02

Pick a bitrate

256 is transparent for practically everyone. Use the target size instead if you are fitting an album onto a player with a fixed capacity.

03

Save the MP3s

Tagged .mp3 files your phone, car and music library will all recognise. Keep the FLACs: they are the masters and this cannot be reversed.

What bitrate is actually transparent?

FLAC is lossless compression: it stores the exact original samples in about half to two thirds the space of a WAV, and decoding one gives you back a bit-perfect copy. That is why it is the right format to archive in and the wrong one to fill a phone with, since even compressed it is five to ten times an MP3.

Because your source is lossless, the MP3 encoder is working from the original waveform rather than something another encoder has already picked over. This is the best case for MP3 and the reason the answer here differs from the transcoding pages. In blind listening tests, well encoded MP3 at 256 kbps is not reliably distinguishable from the source by the large majority of listeners on the large majority of equipment. 320 is available and costs a quarter more bytes for a difference that has proved very hard to demonstrate.

The rule that matters more than the number: keep the FLAC. An MP3 cannot be turned back into it, so if you re-rip, remaster, change players or simply decide 192 was too low, the lossless file is what makes that possible. Treat the MP3s as a disposable copy made for a particular device, not as your library.

FLAC to MP3 FAQ

What bitrate should I use?

256 kbps. Since your FLAC is lossless this is a single lossy pass from the original waveform, which is where MP3 performs at its best, and 256 is not reliably distinguishable from the source in blind testing for most listeners on most equipment. 320 if you want the headroom and have the space; 192 is perfectly good for a phone on a train.

Do the tags and cover art carry over?

Yes. Vorbis comments in the FLAC are rewritten as ID3 tags in the MP3, so artist, album and track number arrive with the file. "Strip tags and cover art" is off by default on this page for exactly that reason, which is the opposite of the compressors.

Can I convert a whole album or library at once?

Yes. Drop the folder and every file queues with the same settings applied. Because nothing is uploaded, a two hundred track library is limited by your machine rather than by anyone's server rules.

Should I delete the FLAC files afterwards?

No. They are the masters and the MP3 cannot be turned back into one. Keep the FLACs wherever storage is cheap and treat the MP3s as a copy made for a specific device, which can always be made again.

Is there any quality loss?

Yes, permanently and by design: that is what lossy compression is. Whether you can hear it is the real question, and at 256 kbps from a lossless source, on headphones or in a car, almost nobody reliably can.

Is my music uploaded?

No. The FLAC is decoded and the MP3 is encoded by your own browser in this tab. A large library is exactly the case where uploading would be slow, and there is no upload endpoint here for it to go to.

Are my FLAC files uploaded to convert them?

No. The FLAC is decoded and the MP3 is written by your own browser, in this tab. There is no upload endpoint in the site for a file to go to, which you can check in your network tools: convert something and watch that no request carries it. Disconnect from the network after the page loads and it still works.