Paste a YouTube link and get the complete transcript with timestamps. Free, instant, no account needed.
Get the full transcript of any YouTube video
Transcriptube reads the caption track that already exists on YouTube and turns it into clean, readable text. There is nothing to install and nothing to sign up for. You paste a link, and a few seconds later the whole transcript sits on this page, from the first word to the last, with a timestamp on every line.
The generator works with regular videos, Shorts, and replays of live streams. It picks up both captions written by the creator and the automatic ones YouTube generates, so it covers the vast majority of public videos. When a video has captions in several languages, you get the original track by default.
What people use it for
Students pull quotes from lectures without scrubbing through hours of playback. Journalists check exactly what was said, word for word, before they cite it. Creators repurpose their own videos into blog posts, newsletters and show notes. Developers and researchers grab text to feed into their own tools. Whatever your case, the transcript is yours to copy and reuse.
If you need more than raw text, the same engine powers our Telegram bot. It writes AI summaries with key points and timestamps, translates transcripts into other languages, exports tidy PDF files and processes whole channels in bulk. The buttons under every transcript take you straight there.
Everything on this page is free and stays free: fetching the transcript, reading it, copying it and downloading the .txt file. There are no word limits, no trial counters and no watermark on the text.
How it works
Copy the link of any YouTube video, Short or livestream replay.
Paste it into the field above and press Get transcript.
Read the full text on this page, then copy it or download it as a .txt file.
Need more than text? Our Telegram bot summarizes, translates, exports PDF and processes videos in bulk.
Paste the video link into the field at the top of this page and press Get transcript. The full text appears on this page within a few seconds, with a timestamp for every line. You can copy it or save it as a .txt file.
Is this YouTube transcript generator really free?
Yes. Viewing, copying and downloading transcripts is free and does not require an account. Advanced features such as AI summaries, translation, PDF export and bulk processing run in our Telegram bot.
Does it work with auto-generated captions?
Yes. If a video only has automatic captions, the generator returns those. Accuracy depends on the audio quality and the speaker, but for most videos automatic captions are close to the spoken words.
Can I get a transcript of a YouTube video without captions?
No tool can fetch a transcript from a video that has no captions at all, because there is no text track to read. In that case the page will tell you the video has no captions. Our Telegram bot can help with some videos by processing the audio.
How long can the video be?
There is no length limit on this page. Lectures, podcasts and multi-hour streams work fine. Longer videos simply take a moment more to load and produce a bigger text file.
Do you store the videos I look up?
No. The transcript is fetched when you ask for it and sent straight to your browser. We do not store the video or the text, and we do not ask who you are.