Turn any YouTube video into text
Paste a link, pick a format, and get the full transcript — clean paragraphs, timestamped lines, or a downloadable subtitle file. Free, no sign-up.
Three steps, no setup
Paste the link
Any public video, Short, or live replay — a standard watch URL or a youtu.be link both work.
Pick a format
Clean paragraphs to read, timestamped lines to cite, or an SRT/VTT file for a video editor.
Copy or download
Grab the text in one click, or save it as a subtitle file. Nothing is stored on our end.
Built for pulling text out of video
Shorts, full-length movies, lectures, live replays — if YouTube generated a caption track for it, this pulls the text out. Whatever you're doing with it next, this covers the format you actually need.
Six output formats
Paragraphs, plain text, timestamped lines, SRT, VTT, or raw JSON — pick whatever the next step needs.
Works on auto-captions
Most videos never had a human-written transcript. YouTube's own auto-captions are enough.
190+ languages
Pull captions in their original language, or translate the whole transcript to your own.
Seconds, not minutes
No watching, no scrubbing the timeline for a quote — the full text lands in one request.
Download subtitles
Export as .srt or .vtt and drop it straight into a video editor or an HTML5 player.
Free, no account
No sign-up, no watermark, no limit on which videos you can pull from — rate-limited, not paywalled.
Shorts to feature length
A 30-second Short, a two-hour lecture, a full YouTube Movie — length and format never matter, only whether captions exist.
Live replays too
Streamed once, captioned automatically. A past livestream's replay works exactly like any other upload.
One honest limit
If a video's captions are turned off entirely, no tool can recover them — including this one. Everything else is fair game.
Questions people actually ask
How do I get a transcript from a YouTube video?
Paste the video's URL above and click Get transcript. If the video has captions — including YouTube's own auto-generated ones — the full text comes back in a few seconds.
Does this work if the video has no official captions?
Yes, as long as YouTube has generated automatic captions for it, which covers the large majority of videos. A video with captions fully disabled by its uploader can't be transcribed by any tool, this one included.
Can I translate the transcript into another language?
Yes — set "Translate to" and the returned text is translated as a whole, not machine-translated line by line. Leave it on "No translation" to keep the original caption language.
Can I download it as SRT or VTT subtitles?
Yes. Choose SRT or VTT as the format before running the tool, then use the download button next to your result — it saves a properly formatted subtitle file, ready for a video editor or web player.
Is there a limit on how many transcripts I can pull?
Yes — 10 free transcripts per day per visitor, plus a short pause between requests to keep things fast for everyone. The allowance resets at midnight UTC, and the page shows how many you have left.
Do you store the video or the transcript?
No. The request is made to our transcript vendor on your behalf, and the text is returned straight to your browser — nothing is saved on our servers.
Am I responsible for how I use the transcript?
Yes. The transcript still belongs to the video's creator — this tool just fetches and formats text already publicly attached to the video, and using it doesn't grant you any new rights over that content. It's provided "as is," with no warranty and no liability for how the output is used — see our Terms of Service for the full details.