Convert MP3 to OGG (Vorbis) Online
Convert MP3 to OGG Vorbis. Open-source, patent-free, ideal for the web.
.mp3 · up to 100 MB
What you can do
MP3 to OGG Vorbis: open-source and patent-free
100% private
Conversion happens in your browser. Your music never leaves your device.
Better quality at low bitrate
Vorbis offers better quality than MP3 at 64-128 kbps in blind listening tests.
Patent-free
OGG Vorbis is 100% patent-free since its creation by the Xiph.Org Foundation.
Instant conversion
No queues or waiting. Conversion in seconds in your browser.
How it works
Three steps, no hassle
Upload your MP3 file
Drag or select your .mp3 file. Up to 100 MB, no signup.
Automatic conversion
Your MP3 converts to OGG Vorbis in your browser. No server uploads.
Download your OGG
OGG file ready for use in video games, web apps, or open-source projects.
FAQ
Got questions?
Yes, in most blind listening tests Vorbis offers better quality than MP3 at the same bitrate, especially at low bitrates (64-128 kbps). Vorbis uses a more advanced psychoacoustic model and does not have the MP3 patent limitations that forced design compromises in the codec. At 128 kbps, Vorbis is generally considered transparent (indistinguishable from the original) for most listeners, while MP3 at 128 kbps may show audible artifacts on fast transients and high frequencies. However, at 192 kbps both codecs are practically indistinguishable to the human ear under normal listening conditions. The most relevant comparison today is Vorbis vs Opus (also from Xiph.org): Opus clearly outperforms Vorbis across nearly all bitrate ranges.
The main reasons are: (1) Patent-free: MP3 was protected by patents until 2017 (Fraunhofer IIS and Alcatel-Lucent), generating licensing costs. OGG Vorbis has been patent-free since its conception. (2) Superior quality at low bitrate: Vorbis sounds better than MP3 at 64-128 kbps. (3) Native support in game engines: Godot Engine, Unity (with plugin), Unreal Engine, and SDL2 support OGG natively. (4) Native browser support: Firefox, Chrome, and Edge play OGG without additional plugins. The main reason not to use OGG is Apple compatibility: Safari and iOS only added basic OGG Vorbis support in recent versions, and iTunes/Apple Music do not support it.
Players and platforms with native support include: VLC Media Player (all platforms), Firefox (since version 3.5, released in 2009), Chrome (since version 4), Android (native support since Android 2.3 Gingerbread), Winamp, foobar2000, Rhythmbox (Linux), Amarok, and most open-source multimedia players. Systems that do NOT natively support OGG are: iTunes/Apple Music, Spotify (internally uses Vorbis but does not accept OGG uploads), QuickTime on Mac (requires additional component), and many consumer audio devices like CD/DVD players. For use in games with Godot or Unity, OGG is frequently the recommended format in the official documentation.
Both are open-source audio codecs developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, but for different use cases. Vorbis (designed from 1998, first stable version in 2002) was designed for music and high-quality audio at medium-high bitrates (64-320 kbps). Opus (standardized by IETF as RFC 6716 in 2012) is the modern successor: it combines CELT technology (for music) and SILK (from Skype, for voice) in a single codec that works from 6 kbps to 510 kbps with ultra-low latency (5ms). Opus outperforms Vorbis in virtually all current benchmarks, especially at low bitrates. For new projects, Opus is Xiph.org's technical recommendation. Vorbis remains widely supported for historical compatibility.
OGG Vorbis uses a different metadata system than MP3: instead of ID3 tags (used by MP3 in its ID3v1 and ID3v2 versions), Vorbis uses Vorbis Comment, a tag system based on plain UTF-8 text. The standard fields are TITLE, ARTIST, ALBUM, DATE, TRACKNUMBER, GENRE, and COMMENT. The conversion from ID3 to Vorbis Comment preserves these standard fields. More complex ID3v2 metadata like album artwork (APIC frames) or synchronized lyrics can also be preserved, though implementation varies by tool. This tool's conversion preserves standard text metadata.
The Xiph.Org Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1994 by Jack Moffitt and Monty Montgomery (Christopher Montgomery) to develop patent-free multimedia codecs. The Vorbis project was born in 1998 as a direct response to announcements that MP3 patents would be aggressively licensed by Fraunhofer IIS. The name 'Vorbis' comes from the character Exquisitor Vorbis in Terry Pratchett's novel 'Small Gods'. Vorbis version 1.0 was released in July 2002. Other important Xiph.org projects include: OGG (the container format, 1993), FLAC (lossless codec, 2001), Theora (video codec, 2004), Opus (2012), and Daala (experimental video codec). The Foundation also maintains libvorbis, the reference implementation of the codec, under the BSD license.
MP3 to OGG Vorbis: codec history, patents, and audio quality
The MP3 codec (MPEG-1 Audio Layer III) was developed by the Fraunhofer Institut fur Integrierte Schaltungen (IIS) in Erlangen, Germany, between 1987 and 1993, with key contributions from Karlheinz Brandenburg, who worked on the psychoacoustic model based on the Modified Discrete Cosine Transform (MDCT). Standardization as ISO/IEC 11172-3 was completed in 1992. The historical problem with MP3 was its patent system: Fraunhofer IIS and Alcatel-Lucent (which acquired related patents from Thomson Multimedia) required royalty payments for commercial encoders and decoders. These patents began expiring in 2007 and the last relevant patent (US6009399) expired in April 2017, finally making MP3 royalty-free. But in 1998, when Christopher Montgomery (Monty) initiated the Vorbis project at Xiph.Org Foundation, MP3 patents were a real and costly problem for free software. The name of the OGG container comes from 'ogging' in the Netrek game slang, meaning to do something aggressive and unexpected. The complete Vorbis I specification (the current and definitive version of the codec) is documented at xiph.org/vorbis/doc/Vorbis_I_spec.pdf.
The technical comparison between MP3 and OGG Vorbis at the same bitrate consistently favors Vorbis in blind ABX listening tests. The Hydrogenaudio project, an audio enthusiast community that has conducted hundreds of comparative tests since 2000, documents that Vorbis at 96 kbps produces quality comparable to MP3 at 128 kbps. At higher bitrates (192+ kbps) the difference is imperceptible. The technical reason for Vorbis's superiority is its more flexible psychoacoustic model: unlike MP3 which uses fixed-size analysis windows (576 PCM samples per MDCT block in normal mode), Vorbis uses variable-size windows (64 to 8192 samples) that adapt to the characteristics of the audio. This allows better handling of transients (percussion attacks, voice consonants) which are the hardest points for perceptual compression. Vorbis also uses a more efficient vector quantization system (codebooks) than MP3's band scaling. In the context of video games, Godot Engine (the open-source game engine) recommends OGG Vorbis for music and long-duration sound effects, while WAV is recommended for short sound effects requiring low latency.
The OGG Vorbis support ecosystem on the modern web is robust. All Chromium-based browsers (Chrome 4+, Edge 79+, Opera 10.5+, Brave) support OGG Vorbis natively in the HTML5 audio and video elements. Firefox has supported OGG since version 3.5 (2009). The situation in Apple's ecosystem is more complex: Safari added experimental OGG Vorbis support in Safari 14 (2020) on macOS, but iOS Safari support remains limited. For web applications that must work on all devices including iPhone, the recommended practice is to serve audio in multiple formats using the HTML5 source element: OGG first, then MP4/AAC as fallback for Safari/iOS. The Web Audio API supports OGG Vorbis in all browsers except Safari, which is relevant for interactive audio applications and web games (canvas-based games). For projects targeting specifically the modern web with Chrome and Firefox support, OGG Vorbis (or better yet, OGG Opus) is the technically superior option, with smaller file sizes and better quality than equivalent MP3.