YouTube → text
YouTube Transcript Generator
Every word of the video. As text you can search.
Paste a link and the whole thing comes back as writing — every line stamped with the second it was said. Read it, search it, download it. Then, if you want, have it summarised.
No link handy? Read a 1-hour talk instead →
no account for your first one · videos up to 4 hours · any language
01
What you do with a video once it is text
Four things that are impossible while it is still forty minutes of audio, and trivial the moment it is not.
- Read it instead of watching it
- A forty-minute video is about four thousand words. You read that in six minutes, and you skim it in one.
- Find the one part you came for
- Search the text, click the line, the player jumps to that second. No dragging the scrubber back and forth guessing where "the pricing bit" was.
- Take it with you
- Copy it, or download it in the format the next tool wants. Timestamps optional — they come along only if you ask for them.
- Ask it things
- Summaries, chapters and follow-up questions all run off the same text, in the same place. You never paste anything anywhere.
- formats
- TXT · SRT · VTT · CSV · JSON · MD
- max length
- 4 hours
- languages
- any spoken · 17 to translate into
- sign-up
- not for your first one
02
Auto-captions are not writing. We fix that.
YouTube's automatic captions have no full stops, no capitals and no paragraphs — they are timing data that happens to contain words. Every other transcript tool hands you exactly that and calls it done.
as captioned
and the second thing which i think gets missed a lot is that you don't actually need permission to start you need about four hours and a laptop that turns on
readable
And the second thing, which I think gets missed a lot, is that you don't actually need permission to start. You need about four hours and a laptop that turns on.
Same words, same timestamps, nothing summarised away. One free readable transcript a day, twenty on Pro — and the raw version is always a click back.
03 · without leaving the video
The same text, docked beside the player
The Chrome extension puts the transcript in a panel on youtube.com itself. Nothing to paste, no second tab — open a video and the text is already there, scrolling along with it.
- →Unlimited transcripts, because the page is already open — nothing to fetch and nothing to meter
- →Search inside the video from the panel, without touching the scrubber
- →One account, one set of limits — history and Pro carry across the site and the extension
Chrome · Edge · Brave · Opera · Arc
04
Against the two things you would otherwise use
YouTube's own transcript panel, and the transcript-download sites. The last row is the one where you should close this page.
| here | youtube panel | download sites | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Getting the text out | Copy, or download in six formats | Select by hand; timestamps come along uninvited | Download, usually one format |
| Punctuation and paragraphs | One click for the readable version | None — raw caption fragments | None |
| Jumping back to the video | Click any line | Click any line | No player to jump to |
| Doing something with it after | Summary, chapters and chat off the same text | Nothing | Nothing |
| Ads and sign-up walls | None; account only after your first one | None | Varies — this is where they make their money |
| You just want to read along while it plays | Overkill — use YouTube's panel | Exactly what it is for | — |
05
The moments people actually open this
“Is this two-hour interview worth two hours?”
Skim the text in ninety seconds and decide. The video is not going anywhere.
“They said a number somewhere around the middle.”
Search the transcript for it. The line you find is a link to the second it was said.
“I need to quote this accurately.”
The words are the words, with the timestamp attached. No transcribing by ear, no "I think he said".
“I want this in my notes, not in a browser tab.”
Markdown out, source URL included, straight into Obsidian, Notion, a doc or a prompt.
06
Transcripts are the free part
Paying is for the things that cost us money to run — the readable version, the summaries, the chat, translation. The limits are printed on the box; there are no credits that drain faster on a long video.
Free
$0/mo
Forever · no card required
- Full timestamped transcripts — 10 a day on the site, unlimited in the extension
- Copy or download as TXT, SRT, VTT, CSV, JSON or Markdown
- 3 AI summaries a day once you sign in — 1 a day without an account
- 1 readable transcript a day, plus 3 chat questions about the video
Or just paste a link above — no install needed
Pro
Billed once a year · cancel anytime
- Transcript Pro on 15 hours of video a month — captions turned into readable, punctuated text
- No daily cap on AI summaries — 500 a month, fair use
- 30 chat questions a day about any video you open
- 17 languages — summaries and full transcripts, whatever language the video is in
- Everything in Free, on both the site and the extension
7-day money-back guarantee
cancel anytime · 7-day money-back guarantee · card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay via Paddle · billing details
07
Asked before signing up
Do I need an account?+
Not for your first transcript of the day — paste a link and read it. Signing in with Google is free and raises the limits, adds history across the site and the extension, and unlocks the chat.
Where does the text come from?+
It is the video's own caption track — the one the creator uploaded, or the one YouTube generated automatically — fetched, cleaned up and timestamped. We do not re-host or re-encode any video.
What if the video has no captions at all?+
Then we cannot turn it into text, and we will say so rather than guess. Running the audio through speech recognition costs real money per minute, and we would rather not put that on the price before anyone has asked for it. Most videos do have captions, auto-generated ones included. If you keep landing on ones that don't, tell us — that is what moves it up the list.
What is the "readable" version?+
Auto-captions arrive with no punctuation, no capitals and no paragraph breaks — a wall of fragments. The readable version is the same words, same timestamps, run through a model that restores the writing: sentences, capitals, paragraphs. Nothing is summarised or rewritten, and you can switch back at any time.
How long can the video be?+
Up to four hours. A two-hour podcast comes back in well under a minute.
Which languages work?+
Any language the video is captioned in — the transcript comes back in the language that was spoken. Reading it in a different language is translation, which is a Pro feature covering 17 languages.
What happens to the videos I open?+
We keep the text so that re-opening the same video is instant and free, and your history is tied to your Google account. We do not sell data and we do not train models on your usage. Details in the privacy policy.
Can I cancel whenever I want?+
Yes — one click in the account menu, and Pro runs to the end of the period you already paid for. There is a 7-day money-back guarantee on top of that, no questions asked.
Pick the video you have been putting off.
It will be text before you finish reading this sentence.