YouTube video transcript generator
Download transcripts, subtitles, and captions from any YouTube video, channel, or playlist. Export as TXT, SRT, JSON, CSV, DOCX, or Markdown.
Sign in with Google to start. Free plan includes 10 transcripts.
How it works
Paste a URL
Drop in a YouTube channel URL, playlist link, or even a single video. We handle all of them.
Select your videos
We scan the channel or playlist and show every video with available captions. Pick the ones you want or grab them all.
Download transcripts
Choose your format — TXT, SRT, JSON, CSV, DOCX, or Markdown — and download everything as a zip file.
Built for bulk
Bulk downloads
Download transcripts from an entire channel or playlist at once. No more copying videos one at a time.
6 export formats
TXT, SRT, JSON, CSV, DOCX, and Markdown. Pick the format that fits your workflow.
Smart caption detection
We detect which videos have captions available before you download, so you never hit a dead end.
Zip download
All transcripts packaged in a single zip file. One click, one download, done.
Who is this for?
Anyone who spends time copy-pasting transcripts one video at a time. Here are the four groups already using YouTube Video Transcript to save hours a week.
AI & LLM researchers
Build training and evaluation datasets from hundreds of hours of natural speech. Export transcripts in JSON with timestamps or clean TXT for tokenization. A single popular channel can yield millions of words of conversational English ready for fine-tuning or benchmarking.
Content creators
Repurpose your own back catalog. Pull every transcript from your channel in seconds, then edit them into blog posts, newsletters, LinkedIn threads, or a book. Your ideas are already written down -- you just need them out of YouTube and into a text editor.
Journalists & researchers
Search across hours of press conferences, interviews, and public talks without watching every minute. Grab transcripts from a source's channel, load them into your notes app, and ctrl-F for the quote you remember. SRT and CSV exports include timestamps so you can jump straight to the clip.
Students & educators
Turn lecture playlists into searchable study notes. Export as Markdown for Obsidian, as DOCX for sharing, or as CSV for spaced-repetition systems. Skim hours of course content in minutes and cite exact timestamps in your assignments and papers.
Why YouTube Video Transcript?
There are four realistic ways to get a YouTube video transcript out of YouTube. Three of them fall apart as soon as you need more than one video at a time. Here is the honest comparison.
Manual copy/paste
- Good
- Free. No tools needed.
- Trade-offs
- One video at a time. No file format options. Breaks as soon as you need more than two or three transcripts.
Browser extensions
- Good
- Lives inside YouTube. Convenient for a single video.
- Trade-offs
- Limited to one video. Usually exports only TXT. Extensions are removed from Chrome Web Store regularly for policy violations.
Developer tools (yt-dlp, APIs)
- Good
- Free. Fully scriptable. Great if you already live in a terminal.
- Trade-offs
- Requires Python or a CLI setup, scripting for channels, manual error handling, and rate-limit management.
YouTube Video Transcript
- Good
- Paste a channel or playlist URL. Get a ZIP in seconds. Six export formats. No install, no scripts, no rate-limit headaches.
- Trade-offs
- Free tier capped at 10 transcripts. Paid plans start at $9/mo -- fair if you are downloading at scale.
YouTube Video Transcript is built specifically for the bulk, multi-format use case: whole channels and playlists, every caption track, six export formats, one ZIP download. If you only need one transcript once a month, the manual method is fine. For everything else, a dedicated tool pays for itself in the first hour you would have spent copying and pasting.
Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know about downloading YouTube video transcripts in bulk.
What is a YouTube video transcript?
A YouTube video transcript is the full text of the spoken audio in a video, extracted from YouTube's caption track. It can include timestamps for every line, or be stripped down to plain text. Transcripts come from two sources: manually uploaded captions (very accurate) and YouTube's auto-generated captions (usable, but with occasional errors on technical terms or heavy accents).
How do I download a YouTube video transcript?
Paste the YouTube URL into the input above. YouTube Video Transcript accepts single-video links, full playlists, or entire channel URLs. Choose your export format -- TXT, SRT, JSON, CSV, DOCX, or Markdown -- and click download. A single transcript is typically ready in seconds; a large channel or playlist may take up to a minute while we fetch every video, and you get one ZIP when it's done.
Can I download transcripts from a whole channel?
Yes. Paste any YouTube channel URL (for example youtube.com/@channelname) and YouTube Video Transcript enumerates every public video on the channel, pulls each available caption track, and packages all of them into one ZIP. That is the core reason the tool exists: bulk downloads that would otherwise require opening each video manually.
What formats are supported?
Six export formats: TXT (plain text, great for AI and LLMs), SRT (subtitle format used by video editors), JSON (structured data with timestamps, ideal for developer pipelines), CSV (for spreadsheets and data analysis), DOCX (for Word and Google Docs), and Markdown (for Obsidian, Notion, and note-taking apps). The free tier exports TXT; paid plans unlock all six.
Is it free?
Yes. Sign in with Google and you get 10 free transcripts, no credit card required, no trial expiration. Paid plans start at $9/month for 1,000 transcripts when you need more.
Do I need to sign in?
To download any transcript, yes — sign in with Google. Accounts come with a 10-transcript free tier, no credit card. You can preview a channel (paste any youtube.com/@channel URL) anonymously to confirm the tool recognizes your videos before signing in. Single videos and playlists go straight to the download flow once you are signed in.
How accurate are the transcripts?
Transcripts are as accurate as the captions on the video itself. Manually uploaded captions are essentially perfect. Auto-generated captions work well for clean English audio but can struggle with technical jargon, proper nouns, heavy accents, or background music. We do not modify the captions -- we extract exactly what YouTube has.
Can I download in other languages?
Yes. If a video has subtitles in multiple languages (either uploaded manually or auto-translated by YouTube), YouTube Video Transcript can extract any available language track. Auto-translated captions are machine-generated, so quality varies by language pair. Manually uploaded translations are always the most reliable.
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Start free. 10 transcripts included.
Sign in with Google to start. No credit card, no trial expiration. Upgrade when you need more -- plans start at $9/month.
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