How to get the transcript of a YouTube video
- Copy the link of the video and paste it in the box above.
- Click Convert. The first time, create your free account: your link stays in place and the conversion continues on its own.
- Read the transcript on the page, then copy it or download it as a file.
It works when the video has no captions
Most transcript tools only copy the captions YouTube already has, so they return nothing when a video has none. This one listens to the audio and writes down what is said, with punctuation and capital letters. If YouTube refuses to hand over the audio, the tool falls back on the captions of the video.
Give a video to ChatGPT or Claude
An AI assistant cannot watch a video from a link: it only sees the address. Paste the transcript instead and it can summarise the video, answer questions about it, pull out the key points or turn it into notes. The text comes out as Markdown, a plain text format that ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini read without any cleanup. See what ChatGPT really gets from a YouTube link.
Several videos at once
Paste several links, one per line, and each video gets its own transcript. When they are done you can download them all in one ZIP file.
Not only YouTube
The same box accepts links from TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Twitch and SoundCloud. You can also upload a video or audio file from your device with the file tab; a file transcript carries a timestamp on each passage.
What to know before you start
- You need a free account. It comes with free credits every month, and a transcript uses credits according to the length of the video.
- The longest video you can convert depends on your plan.
- Private videos, members-only videos and age-restricted videos cannot be read from a link.
- A transcript made from a link has no timestamps.
- Speech recognition can mishear names, numbers and technical words: check the passages that matter.
For other kinds of recordings, see video to text and audio to text.