Free tool
YouTube transcript generator
Paste a link and get the full spoken text, with a timestamp on every line. It runs on the video's existing caption track, so there is no upload and no processing queue.
Works with public videos that have captions. Free — no sign-up.
How it differs from a transcription service
This tool: reads what is already there
YouTube has already done the hard part. Every video with captions carries a timed text track, and that track is what the player shows when you turn subtitles on. We read it directly. The transcript appears in about as long as it takes to load a web page, and it costs nothing to produce.
A transcription service: listens to the audio
Paid services run the audio through their own speech recognition. That is genuinely better for videos with no captions, heavy accents or overlapping speakers — and it is the only option for your own unpublished footage. It also costs money per minute and makes you wait.
What you get back
- Timestamps that work. Click any one and the embedded player jumps to that moment. The line you are hearing highlights as it plays.
- Search inside the transcript. Type a word and every match highlights, with a count and arrows to step through them.
- A clear label on the source. Creator-written or auto-generated — the metadata line tells you which, because it changes how much you should trust the wording.
- Five download formats. .txt, .srt, .vtt, .md and .json, all generated in your browser from the same data.
Generator questions
Does this generate the transcript, or just fetch one?
It fetches. Every public YouTube video that has captions already carries a timed text track — either one the creator wrote or one YouTube's speech recognition produced. We pull that track and reshape it into a readable transcript. That is why the result is instant instead of taking as long as the video itself.
What if the video has no captions at all?
Then there is nothing to generate from, and the tool says so rather than guessing. Very new uploads are the usual case: YouTube's automatic captions can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to appear. Waiting and trying again generally works.
How long can the video be?
Up to three hours. Beyond that the transcript becomes unwieldy in a browser and we refuse it up front rather than hanging. Within that limit, a three-hour podcast behaves the same as a three-minute clip — the list only renders the lines you can actually see.
Is there a limit on how many I can generate?
There is a rate limit per IP address to keep the service up, but no daily cap and no account. If you hit it, waiting a minute clears it.
Can I generate a transcript in another language?
If the video carries a caption track in that language, yes — we prefer an English track when one exists and fall back to whatever the video offers. We do not translate: the transcript comes back in the language of the track we found.
Ready to read the video?
Paste a link on the home page and the transcript appears in seconds. No account, no plugin, no cost.
Get a transcript