Free YouTube Transcript Extractor
Paste any YouTube URL, get the full transcript as plain text. No signup, no AI summary, no quota games — just clean caption text you can copy or download. Optional timestamps for note-taking workflows. 50 free extractions per day.
When this tool helps
- Custom analysis in ChatGPT or Claude. Paste the transcript into your AI of choice with your own prompt — great for unusual output formats, multilingual translation, or domain-specific extraction the standard summarizer doesn't cover.
- Searchable text archive. Save the transcript with timestamps to your notes app. Future-you can grep for the exact quote.
- Citations and quotes. Extract a verbatim quote from a long video for academic or journalistic citation. Timestamps double as source references.
- Translation. Get the transcript in the original language, paste it into a translation tool, work with the result.
- Accessibility. Some users prefer to read transcripts rather than watch video. This is the fastest path from URL to readable text.
FAQ
Is this YouTube transcript extractor really free?▾
Yes. 50 transcript extractions per day per IP, no signup, no email, no card. The free tier is genuinely free; we don't push you to a paywall after a couple of uses.
Does this work with YouTube Shorts?▾
Yes. Standard, youtu.be, and youtube.com/shorts URLs all work. Shorts have shorter transcripts but the same extraction process.
Can I download the transcript with timestamps?▾
Yes. Toggle the 'Include timestamps' checkbox before copying or downloading. The output formats each line as '[00:42] caption text' which is parseable by most note-taking apps.
What's the difference between this and the main summarizer?▾
This tool returns the raw transcript text only — no AI processing, no summary, no key points. The main summarizer at the homepage returns a paragraph summary plus key points. Use the transcript tool when you want to do your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT, search for specific quotes, archive raw text). Use the summarizer when you want the AI to extract takeaways for you.
Why does some videos return 'No transcript available'?▾
Three common reasons: (1) the video has captions disabled by the creator, (2) the video has no spoken content (pure music or visual gags) so YouTube auto-captions returned nothing, (3) the video is private or unlisted. Most public YouTube videos with audio do have auto-generated captions.
Do you store the transcripts I extract here?▾
No. The transcript tool just fetches the YouTube caption track and streams it back to you. Nothing is stored on our servers. The main /summary archive only stores videos that go through the AI summarization pipeline, not transcripts extracted via this tool.
Can I use this commercially?▾
The tool itself is free for any use. The transcripts you extract are caption tracks owned by YouTube and the original video creators — your usage of them is governed by YouTube's terms of service and applicable copyright law. We just provide extraction.
What languages does it support?▾
All 50+ languages YouTube has captions for, including auto-generated. Whichever language the video's caption track is in, that's what you get back.