FLAC to MP3 Converter
FLAC is the format you archive a music collection in; MP3 is the format you carry it around in. This page makes 320 kbps MP3 copies of lossless tracks while your FLAC originals stay untouched.
Audio Converter
or drop MP3, WAV, M4A … files here ·
Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes
Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.
Constant bitrate (CBR) gives a predictable size and works on every player. Variable bitrate (VBR) spends bits where the music needs them and is usually smaller at the same quality.
Keep the source rate unless a device asks for one. 44.1 kHz is CD standard, 48 kHz is video standard, 8 kHz is used by phone systems and AMR.
Mono halves the size of lossless files and is fine for voice recordings.
16-bit is CD quality. 24-bit keeps headroom for editing and mastering; converting a 16-bit source up does not add detail.
Optional. Seconds (e.g. 75) or minutes:seconds (1:15). Leave empty to start at the beginning.
Optional. Same format as the start time. Leave empty to keep everything up to the end.
How to use this tool
- 1
Upload FLAC tracks
Select up to 20 .flac files at a time, each up to 95 MB, which covers a typical CD-quality album track several times over.
- 2
Check bitrate and sample rate
Bitrate is preset to 320 kbps and Sample rate to 44.1 kHz so hi-res files are brought down to a rate MP3 supports. Drop to 192 kbps for a phone with little storage.
- 3
Convert to MP3
Press Convert to MP3 and download the tracks or one ZIP of the album. Tags and embedded artwork are copied unless you untick Keep tags and cover art.
How do I convert FLAC to MP3 without losing more than necessary?
Upload the .flac tracks and press Convert to MP3 at the preset 320 kbps, 44.1 kHz. That is the highest-quality MP3 there is, and keeping the original FLAC files means you never lose the lossless master.
Why a FLAC library still needs MP3 copies
FLAC, the Free Lossless Audio Codec, was released by Josh Coalson in 2001 and has been maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation since 2003. It compresses audio the way a ZIP file compresses text: every sample comes back bit for bit, usually at roughly half to two-thirds of the size of the WAV it came from. That makes it the standard for CD rips, Bandcamp purchases and hi-res downloads.
The same strengths cause friction away from the desk. A ripped album in FLAC can fill a gigabyte of phone storage, older car head units and portable players skip .flac files, and Apple's Music app will not import them at all. An MP3 copy fixes all three at once. If an editor or DAW is the destination instead, convert FLAC to WAV so no lossy step is involved.
FLAC to MP3 converter: how much space each bitrate saves
2.4 MBper minute of stereo audio at 320 kbps, the highest MP3 bitrate
Best for a main listening library and anything played on good headphones or a home system.
- About 2.4 MB per minute
- A 45-minute album is roughly 108 MB
- Closest an MP3 gets to the FLAC
A sensible middle ground for phones you also use for photos and apps.
- About 1.9 MB per minute
- Same rate many music stores have sold AAC at
- Hard to separate from 320 kbps on earbuds
Fits large collections onto small cards and older players.
- About 1.4 MB per minute
- Good for car stereos and gym playlists
Hi-res FLAC, tags and album art
Going from lossless to lossy is a one-way door: the encoder throws away the parts of the signal it judges least audible, and no later step can add them back. That is the reason to convert once, from the original FLAC, at the bitrate you will actually use, rather than converting MP3s again later. Hi-res files at 88.2, 96 or 192 kHz are resampled to 44.1 kHz because MP3 tops out at 48 kHz.
What the MP3 keeps and what it drops
- Title, artist, album, track number and genre tags
- The embedded front cover image
- Stereo channels exactly as in the FLAC
- Not kept: bit-perfect samples or 24-bit depth
- Not kept: sample rates above 48 kHz
- Not used: an embedded cue sheet for splitting
FLAC and MP3 format facts
FLAC
Free Lossless Audio Codec
FLAC is an open-source lossless audio codec released by Josh Coalson in 2001 and now maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. It reduces audio to about 50–70% of the original size without losing any quality, so a FLAC file can be decoded back to an exact copy of the source. It supports high resolutions and rich metadata and is popular for CD rips and hi-res music downloads. Files are much larger than MP3, and some Apple apps and older devices have limited support.
- Compression
- Lossless
- Transparency
- –
- Animation
- –
- Introduced
- 2001 · Xiph.Org Foundation (Josh Coalson)
MP3
MP3 audio
MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer III) is a lossy audio format developed largely at the Fraunhofer Institute and standardised by MPEG in 1993. It removes sounds the ear is unlikely to notice, shrinking music to about a tenth of CD size at 128–320 kbps. All patents have expired, and every phone, car stereo, browser and media player supports it. Quality loss is audible at low bitrates and accumulates with re-encoding.
- Compression
- Lossy
- Transparency
- –
- Animation
- –
- Introduced
- 1993 · Fraunhofer IIS / MPEG
FLAC rips are too large for phones with limited storage and are ignored by Apple's Music app and many car stereos, so people keep the lossless masters at home and carry 320 kbps MP3 copies everywhere else.
FLAC to MP3: what people ask
Should I delete the FLAC files after converting?
No. The MP3 is a lossy copy, and you cannot rebuild the original from it: converting MP3 back to FLAC only wraps the reduced audio in a bigger file. Keep the FLAC library on a backup drive and regenerate MP3s whenever a device needs them.
Can the Apple Music app on a Mac import FLAC?
Not directly; the Music app and iTunes for Windows skip .flac files when you add a folder. Converting to MP3 solves it, and if you want to stay lossless inside Apple's ecosystem, FLAC to ALAC produces an Apple Lossless .m4a that Music imports and syncs to iPhone.
Will I hear a difference between 320 kbps MP3 and FLAC?
On most headphones and in cars, 320 kbps MP3 is very hard to tell apart from the lossless source. That is why this page defaults to the highest MP3 setting.
What happens to a 24-bit 96 kHz FLAC?
MP3 supports sample rates only up to 48 kHz and does not store bit depth the way PCM does, so a hi-res file is resampled to the 44.1 kHz set here and encoded normally. The result is the same size as an MP3 made from a CD rip; the extra resolution simply has nowhere to go.
Does an embedded cue sheet split the album into tracks?
No. A cue sheet embedded in a single-file album rip is not used to split the audio, so convert per-track FLAC files if you want separate MP3s. Title, artist, album, track number, year, genre and the front cover are mapped from FLAC's Vorbis comments to ID3 tags.
