YouTube Transcript Generator
Paste a link. Get the transcript with timestamps, even without captions.
Uses captions when they are good, at a tenth of a minute per minute of video. Listens when they are not.
Free to try, no sign-up. Captions first, listening when there are none.
How it works
Paste the link
A watch URL, a youtu.be link or a Short.
Captions are checked
Good captions are used. Missing or poor ones are skipped and the audio is transcribed.
Read or export
Copy the transcript, or export SRT, VTT, TXT, Markdown or JSON.
What the transcript looks like
- 0:00
Bread rises because of a living thing you cannot see: yeast, a single-celled fungus.
- 0:06
When it finds sugar in the dough, it eats, and one of the things it gives off is carbon dioxide gas.
- 0:14
That gas has nowhere to go. It pushes the dough outward, one tiny bubble at a time.
- 0:22
The gluten in flour holds those bubbles in, so the dough stretches instead of tearing.
- 0:31
Now watch what happens when we let it rest for an hour.
Illustrative sample from a cooking-science talk. Real results link every line to the video.
Captions first, then listening
Scribiz first looks for the captions YouTube already has: a manual track in the video's language, or the automatic track when it passes a quality check. Machine translations of captions are skipped.
If there are no captions, or they are poor, Scribiz listens to the audio and writes a new transcript. The result page says which one you got. That is why it works when the Show transcript button is missing, and why the text can differ from what YouTube shows. The guide to opening the transcript on YouTube says where the button is and why it goes missing.
Want a fresh read of a video with rough auto-captions? Use Transcribe a YouTube video.
| The video has | You get |
|---|---|
| Good captions | The captions, with their own timing. Quick, and a tenth of a minute per minute of video. |
| No captions, or poor ones | A fresh transcript from the audio, at one minute per minute of video. |
| No speech | An empty transcript. The video analyzer reads the screen instead. |
Copy it or save it
The transcript opens on a private page with a timestamp on every line. Copy it as plain text or with timestamps, or export SRT, VTT, TXT, Markdown, Context and JSON. Copy for AI puts the transcript in one block you can paste into an AI chat.
Download a YouTube transcript shows what each format looks like. For the short version, the YouTube video summarizer adds key points and chapters.
Which videos work
Public videos, Shorts and finished live streams work. Unlisted, private, members-only and age-restricted videos need a sign-in, and live ones are not supported.
Scribiz writes the language that is spoken and does not translate. Sources and limits lists every case, and minutes and billing explains what a run costs.
Limits
Public videos only. Without an account: videos up to 15 minutes, 10 Listen or Watch minutes a day and 30 caption lookups a day. A free account takes videos up to 2 hours and 30 minutes a month. Pro takes 6 hours and 600 minutes a month, and is not on sale yet. A video that already has captions uses a tenth of a minute per minute of video.
See pricing · How minutes are counted · Paid plans are not on sale yet.