YouTube Transcript
Generator, free and instant
Paste a YouTube link and get the transcript in seconds, punctuated, clean, and ready to copy. Free, and no sign up needed.
Using Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor? Connect the TranscriptFetch MCP server and your assistant can fetch YouTube transcripts itself.
How to get a transcript from a YouTube link
Tap Share, then Copy link, or lift the URL straight from your browser bar.
We read the caption track, or transcribe the audio when there is none, and clean up the punctuation for you.
Copy it as plain text, or download a subtitle file. Nothing is stored afterwards.
What you get back
The video's caption track when it has one, cleaned into prose with punctuation and sentence breaks. When it has none, the spoken words transcribed by AI. Not a summary, and not a wall of lowercase.
Where a video carries timings, you can switch the view to show them or export the video to text as a subtitle file. Where it does not, you still get the full script, so nothing is promised that a given video cannot deliver.
Plain .txt for writing, .srt and .vtt for editors like CapCut and Premiere, .csv when you want the segments in a spreadsheet.
Clear speech lands around 95–98%. Loud music under quiet talking, heavy slang, and two people speaking at once all pull that down. Re-running the same link sometimes catches the missed words, because the audio is analysed from scratch each time.
10 transcripts a month are free with no account. A free account adds 25 more, plus playlists, channels and bulk runs, and Plus is 1,000 a month for $5. Every transcript comes with the same downloads either way. If you need to transcribe videos from your own code, that is what the TranscriptFetch API is for.
What people use it for
Turn a video into a blog post, a newsletter, or a chapter list.
Quote a lecture accurately instead of scrubbing back and forth on the timeline.
Pull hooks and keywords out of competitors' best-performing videos.
Read a video when captions are missing, auto-generated badly, or in the wrong language.
40+ languages detected automatically
You do not pick one. The language is detected from the audio, so a Spanish video comes back in Spanish.
Guides
What YouTube does and does not give you, and how to get the words out anyway.
The CC button is missing or greyed out. Here is what that means, who can fix it, and how to get the words from a video that has no captions at all.
Watch links, youtu.be links, Shorts, playlists, channels, and the ID inside each one. How to find a video's URL on desktop and mobile, and which links a transcript tool accepts.
YouTube transcript generator: frequently asked questions
Is it really free?
Yes. 10 transcripts a month are free with no account and no card, and a free account adds 25 more. If you need more than that, Plus is 1,000 a month for $5.
Do you store the videos or the transcripts?
No. The audio is processed in memory and discarded once your text is on screen. Nothing is kept.
How accurate is it?
When the video has captions we use those, which are exact for creator-uploaded tracks and very good for YouTube's auto-generated ones. When it has none, the audio is transcribed with AI, typically 95 to 98% on clear speech.
Can I transcribe a private or unlisted video?
Unlisted works, since anyone with the link can watch it. Private, members-only and age-restricted videos do not: if you cannot open it in a browser without logging in, neither can we.
Does it work with short links and Shorts?
Yes. youtu.be links, Shorts, mobile URLs, and watch links with a timestamp or tracking parameters attached all work.
How long can the video be?
Any length when the video has captions, which is most of YouTube. A video with no caption track is transcribed from its audio, and that path covers up to 20 minutes.
Can I use this for subtitles?
Yes. Download .srt or .vtt and drop it straight into CapCut, Premiere, or YouTube.
Is transcribing someone else's video legal?
Transcribing for research, quoting, or accessibility is normal use. Republishing someone's content as your own is not, and that is on you rather than on the tool.
Can I do this in bulk, or from my own code?
Yes. TranscriptFetch is the API behind this page: one call returns the same transcript as JSON for YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, with batch fetching and an MCP server for AI tools. It includes 50 free credits a month.
Some words came out wrong. Why?
Auto-generated captions mis-hear names, brands and jargon; creator-uploaded captions usually do not. Where a video carries both, we prefer the uploaded track.