YouTube Transcript Generator (Free)

On YouTube

Open the video. In the description below it, click Show transcript. The transcript opens next to the video and scrolls as it plays, and you can click any line to jump to that moment. This works for any video that has captions (YouTube Help explains it on its page about viewing transcripts). It is the quickest way to read along.

With this tool

Paste the video's link into the box at the top of this page and click Generate Transcript. You get the same caption text, but as a file you can keep: plain text, or SRT and VTT subtitle files with the times. That is the easier route when you want to search the text, quote it, translate it, or use it in another app.

We checked the tools Google shows first for "youtube transcript generator" on 13 October 2026. Here is what each one says on its own page, including where ours falls short.

Our tool reads YouTube's captions, so its words match what Show transcript displays. Between tools, the bigger differences are files, limits and summaries. Pick by what you will do with the text: read along, copy a long talk for free, or get subtitle files and a summary.

• The words, in order. The caption text, joined into readable lines.
• Timestamps. In the SRT and VTT files each line keeps its start and end time from the caption track. The on-page text and the TXT file are the words only.
• Three downloads. TXT is just the words. SRT is numbered subtitle lines with times, for video editors. VTT is the same idea for web video players.
• A short summary. A few sentences and the key points, written automatically from the transcript.
• The captions' own language. If the captions are in Spanish, the transcript is in Spanish. Nothing is translated.

Here is the start of the SRT file our tool made for the NASA video in the example above. Each block has a number, the start and end time, and the words:

1
00:00:00,900 --> 00:00:03,503
This is the moment where we
should all start believing again.

2
00:00:03,503 --> 00:00:05,305
Now bound for the Moon.

3
00:00:05,305 --> 00:00:08,641
America is returning to the Moon
to build a Moon Base.

Video editors such as Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve can import a file like this as a subtitle track, and YouTube Studio accepts SRT and VTT when you add subtitles to your own video.

A transcript can only be as complete as the captions behind it. These are the reasons a video comes back empty:

• No captions at all. YouTube makes automatic captions for many languages, but not every one — its help page lists the languages it supports. Captions can also be missing when the sound is poor, when people talk over each other, or when the video is very long.
• The video is brand new. YouTube says automatic captions can take a while when the audio is complex. Try again later.
• The video is private, for channel members only, or removed. We can only read public videos.
• It is a playlist or channel link. Paste the link of each video instead.

We see this in our own numbers: in September 2026, 15 of the YouTube videos people pasted into our tool had no captions. Most were talks in Chinese, Arabic or Urdu, plus a few music clips. When it happens, the tool tells you why, and it does not count against your limit.

• Check names and numbers. YouTube's automatic captions often get names, brands and figures wrong. Fix those before you quote or publish anything.
• Quote with the time. Keep the timestamp next to a quote, so anyone can open the video at that moment and hear it for themselves.
• Edit an SRT file safely. Change only the text lines. Leave the numbers and the time lines exactly as they are, or the subtitles will drift.
• Clean up line breaks for reading. Caption lines are short so they fit on screen. If you paste the text into a document, join them into sentences and paragraphs.
• Know what the free plan shows. On the free plan you get the first minute of each video, and the result tells you how much is hidden. Pro returns the whole video.

A video you already transcribed on Pro does not use another credit if you open it again.

• Study notes. Turn a lecture or tutorial into text you can skim, highlight and search, instead of scrubbing through the video.
• Quotes. Find the exact words from an interview or a talk, with the time stamp so you can check them in the video.
• Writing. Use the transcript as the first draft of a blog post, newsletter or show notes.
• Subtitles. Fix the caption text, then load the SRT into your editor or upload it to YouTube Studio.
• Finding a moment. Search a long video for the part where a topic comes up, then jump straight to it.