Free YouTube Transcript Generator (30 credits every 30 days)

What you get on the free tier

Most free YouTube transcript tools either cripple output to plain text, cap you at a single video, or route you into an endless CAPTCHA loop the moment you paste a second URL. This free tier is built to avoid all three traps.

• 30 credits every 30 days, no credit card. Sign in with Google once. They reset every 30 days, so this is a tier you can keep using, not a trial that runs out.
• Every export format on free. TXT for reading and LLM ingestion, SRT for subtitles, JSON and CSV for structured output, Markdown for note-taking apps, and DOCX through the API. No format is held back for paid tiers.
• Bulk after sign-in. Channel and playlist URLs show the video list plus one free transcript preview anonymously. After you sign in with Google, the tool pulls every video in one job, capped by the credits remaining in your current free cycle.
• Timestamps included. SRT, JSON and CSV carry per-line timestamps on every plan, which is what quote attribution, video editing and LLM chunking need.
• Multi-language support. If a video has captions in multiple languages, you can pick which track to pull. Auto-generated and manually uploaded captions both work.

What the free tier does not include

Being up front about what the free tier does not do is more useful than surprise limits mid-workflow. Here is the complete list.

• Unused credits do not roll over. Each cycle starts at 30 whatever you did with the last one, so a quiet month does not bank credit toward a heavy one. Reaching 30 before the cycle ends means waiting for the reset or moving to a paid plan.
• No bulk API jobs. The public API's bulk endpoint needs a paid plan, so a free key cannot enqueue a 500-video channel. Single-video API calls work on free.
• A lower rate limit. Free accounts are capped at 5 transcript requests a minute. Paid plans run from 20 a minute on Starter to 120 on Business.
• No AI summary features. AI summaries and chapter extraction are paid add-ons once they ship. The raw transcript is always available on every tier.

When to move to a paid plan

If any of these apply, the free tier will run out on you quickly and paid plans start at $9 a month with 1,000 credits per month included:

• You are researching a topic that spans a dozen channels or more.
• You are repurposing your own back catalog of 50+ videos into blog posts, SEO pages, or newsletter issues.
• You have a recurring workflow (a weekly newsletter, a monthly report, a quarterly competitive scan) that needs fresh transcripts on a schedule.
• You are building a product feature that hits the tool regularly from your own workflow automation.

The full pricing page breaks down the four tiers with per-transcript math. The short version: Starter at $9/month works for most serious users, Pro at $19/month fits power users running large back-catalog projects, and Business at $49/month covers teams pulling tens of thousands of transcripts a month.

How the free tier compares to other free options

There are three other paths to free YouTube transcripts, each with its own trade-off. The free tier here is designed to plug the gap between "totally free but painful" and "proper tool but paid."

• YouTube's Show Transcript button. Fully free, no signup, but one video at a time and no export format. Fine for a single video; terrible for a channel.
• yt-dlp. Free, open source, unlimited volume, if you have Python, a terminal, and patience for configuration. Most people do not.
• Chrome extensions. Free, in-browser, quick for one-offs. They disappear from the Chrome Web Store regularly, rarely support bulk, and usually output TXT only.

Compared to those, the free tier here trades a single sign-in for bulk support, a web UI, and plain TXT output you can drop straight into an LLM. Our full breakdown of every free option is in the free YouTube transcript generator roundup on the blog.

Who the free tier is really for

A journalist who needs three or four transcripts from a politician's channel for a story. A student capturing a lecture series so they can search it during exam prep. A creator testing whether a tool fits into their content workflow before committing to a monthly fee. A developer prototyping a feature and wanting to confirm the output shape before wiring up a paid API. If you are in any of those shoes, the 30 credits can cover up to 30 transcripts every 30 days when used only for transcripts.

If you have already burned through free tools and ended up back here because copy-pasting 50 caption panels is its own punishment, the free tier is also for you. You will know within the first three exports whether this is the tool you want to stand up a workflow on.

How to start

1. Open the transcript workbench.
2. Paste a YouTube video, playlist, or channel URL into the input.
3. Sign in with Google, which takes two clicks.
4. Pick your format: TXT, SRT, JSON, CSV, or Markdown.
5. Click download and your ZIP is built for you.

Frequently asked questions