3 Filler Word Removers, Compared Honestly

You have a transcript — from an interview, a webinar, a voice memo you dictated — and it is unreadable. Every third sentence starts with “so, basically” and ends with “you know”, because that is how people talk and it is not how people read.

The tools that dominate this space are audio editors. They find the filler words in the waveform and cut them out of the recording, which is exactly right if you are publishing the audio. It is beside the point if the audio is already done, or was never going to be published, and what you actually need is clean text to paste into a document.

How to judge a filler word remover

Text or audio? These are different jobs. Cutting “um” out of a waveform is signal processing; cutting it out of a transcript is text processing. Paying for the first when you need the second is common and avoidable.

Is the word list sensible? “Um” and “uh” are safe to strip anywhere. “Like”, “just”, and “actually” are sometimes filler and sometimes load-bearing, and a tool that removes them blindly will mangle real sentences.

Does it need an upload? Interview transcripts routinely contain names, opinions, and off-record remarks. Where the text goes matters.

How much does the free tier really cover? Audio tools tend to meter by minutes processed, which runs out faster than you expect.

The comparison

Facts checked August 2026; plans can change.

Descript

Descript’s core trick is still impressive: edit the transcript and the audio changes to match. For anyone producing a podcast or a video, removing filler words as a text operation that propagates to the recording is the right mental model, and the surrounding editing tools are mature.

The free plan is a trial in practice rather than a working tier — one hour of media a month, exports capped at 720p, no watermark-free export, and only limited access to the filler word removal tool itself, which sits properly on the paid plans. If your transcript is already extracted and the audio is not the deliverable, you are paying for machinery you will not use.

Cleanvoice

Cleanvoice is narrower and, for its niche, very good: upload audio or video and it removes filler words, mouth sounds, stutters, silences, and background noise in one pass. It also handles transcription and summaries. For cleaning up a batch of recorded interviews before you publish them, this is a strong fit.

You need an account, the free allowance is 30 minutes of media, and after that it moves to pay-as-you-go credits or a subscription starting around $11. It is also, again, an audio tool — feeding it a text transcript is not what it is for.

Hemingway Editor

Hemingway comes at the problem from the text side. Its free web editor highlights complex sentences, passive voice, and unnecessary adverbs, which overlaps meaningfully with what makes a transcript hard to read even after the “um”s are gone. If your real complaint is that the writing is flabby, this addresses more of the cause.

It is not a filler word remover, though. It will not strip “you know” from two hundred lines of transcript in one action, and the deeper editing features sit behind Hemingway Editor Plus, a paid subscription with a two-week trial.

Filler Word Remover

Ours is the narrow text version. Paste a transcript or draft and it returns a cleaned copy with common filler words — um, uh, basically, honestly, and the rest of the usual suspects — removed, ready to paste into your final document. It runs entirely in your browser, so a sensitive interview transcript never leaves your machine.

The honest limitations are two. It works on text only, so if you need the audio cleaned you want Descript or Cleanvoice, not us. And it removes words from a list without understanding the sentence, so a genuine use of “like” in a comparison can be caught along with the filler. Read the output before you ship it; it is a first pass, not a copy editor.

Which one to pick

• If the audio is the deliverable, use Descript or Cleanvoice — a text tool cannot help you.
• If you have a pile of recorded interviews to clean in bulk, Cleanvoice is the most focused of the audio options.
• If the transcript is readable but the prose is heavy, Hemingway addresses more than filler.
• If you have text and want the filler gone in one paste, use ours.

How to do it with Filler Word Remover

1. Open the Filler Word Remover.
2. Paste your transcript or draft into the input.
3. Copy the cleaned text out.
4. Reread it once, restoring any word that was doing real work. More writing tools are in the tools directory.

You might also need

• Word Counter — to see how much the cleanup actually saved.
• Readability Checker — for whether the result reads as easily as it now looks.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free filler word remover that doesn’t need an account?

For text, yes — ours requires no account because the site has no signup. The audio tools all require registration: Descript and Cleanvoice both need an account even to use their free allowances.

Are filler words actually a problem?

In writing, yes; in speech, less than people think. Linguists have long argued that words like “uh” and “um” serve real conversational functions, signalling hesitation and holding the floor — Herbert Clark and Jean Fox Tree’s research on the use of uh and um is the standard reference. Strip them from a transcript meant to be read; keep them if you are quoting someone verbatim.

Should I remove filler words from a quoted interview?

Be careful. Light cleanup is standard editorial practice, but heavy trimming can change what someone appears to have said. If the transcript is on the record, note that it has been edited for clarity.

Final thought

Match the tool to the artefact you are shipping. If it is audio, edit audio; if it is text, do not pay for a video editor to remove four hundred instances of “um” from a document.

Try the free Filler Word Remover