YouTube Transcript
Paste any YouTube link and get the whole transcript, free. Copy it or download it as text, subtitles or Markdown.
Free and instant. Premium names every speaker and spells the names right.
How to get a YouTube transcript
Step 1
Paste the link
Copy the address of any public YouTube video, Short or live replay and paste it in the box above. A youtu.be share link works too.
Step 2
Read the whole transcript
The full caption transcript appears beside the video, every line with its timestamp. Click a timestamp to play the video from that moment.
Step 3
Copy or download it
Turn timestamps off, switch to paragraphs, pick another caption language, then copy the text or download it as .txt, .srt, .vtt or .md.
It works on any public video with captions: interviews, lectures, podcasts, tutorials, earnings calls posted to YouTube, and Shorts. Long videos are fine. A three-hour podcast comes back as one transcript, not in pieces.
Every format you need
Text (.txt)
Plain text for notes, documents and AI prompts. Keeps your timestamp and paragraph choices.
Subtitles (.srt)
Timed captions that YouTube, Premiere, DaVinci Resolve and most players accept, two lines of 42 characters at most.
WebVTT (.vtt)
The caption format of the web. Premium speaker names ride as voice tags that a player can show or hide.
Markdown (.md)
A clean document for Notion, Obsidian or a repo. Every timestamp links back to that moment in the video.
Copy puts the transcript on your clipboard exactly as it shows on screen. With timestamps off and paragraphs on, it reads like an article, ready to paste into a doc, an email or a prompt for ChatGPT or Claude.
YouTube captions or Premium
Most transcript sites hand you YouTube's own captions, mistakes included. The YouTube captions tab does that too, for free. The Premium tab is different: it is a new transcript made from the audio, so it separates the speakers, names them, and gets the names of people and companies right far more often.
| Feature | YouTube captions | Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | 300 credits per started 15 minutes, on paid plans |
| Where the words come from | The video's own caption track, written by the creator or by YouTube | Our own transcript, made from the audio |
| Who said each line | Not marked | Every speaker separated and named |
| Names of people and companies | Often misheard | About 20 times fewer misspelled names* |
| Videos with no captions | Nothing to show | Transcribed from the audio |
| Timestamps, paragraphs, copy, downloads | Yes | Yes, with speaker names in every format |
What the difference looks like
| YouTube's captions | Premium | Video |
|---|---|---|
| Palunteer | Palantir | Sourcery with Molly O'Shea, Saronic's co-founders |
| enthropic | Anthropic | Theo - t3.gg, Claude watermarks your code now |
| Open Eye | OpenAI | etn., OpenAI explores a $1.2T funding round |
| Bennis Bus | Bending Spoons | Sourcery with Molly O'Shea, Bending Spoons founders |
*On 167 tech and finance videos in October 2026, YouTube's captions misspelled 1,687 names that Premium spelled right. Names only; on everyday words the two mostly agree.
More than one video
YouTube transcripts in ChatGPT and Claude
Add Arcmira to your AI and ask for any video's transcript, or ask what was said across a whole channel.
Transcript API
Captions and Premium transcripts as JSON by video id. A free key comes with 1,000 credits a month.
Alerts when a name is said
Follow a company or a person and hear about it the moment a show mentions them.
Questions
Is the YouTube transcript tool free?
Yes. Your first transcript needs no account. A free account then gets 1,000 credits a month, which covers 250 caption transcripts of videos up to 15 minutes long. Each caption transcript uses 4 credits per started 15 minutes of video, and reading the same video again within 7 days is free.
Do I need to sign up?
Not for your first transcript. For the next one, continue with Google or your email. It takes a few seconds and the transcript you asked for loads as soon as you are back.
How do I get the transcript of a YouTube video?
Paste the video's link into the box at the top of this page. The whole transcript appears in about a second or two, with a timestamp on every line. You can copy it or download it right away.
Can I get the transcript without timestamps?
Yes. Turn Timestamps off and the text drops them. Switch to Paragraphs to join the lines into readable paragraphs. Copy, .txt and .md follow what you see. Subtitle files (.srt and .vtt) are always timed.
Which languages are supported?
Every caption language the video offers, including YouTube's automatic captions. When a video has more than one track, pick it from the language menu above the transcript.
Which formats can I download?
Plain text (.txt), SubRip subtitles (.srt), WebVTT (.vtt) and Markdown (.md), for both the free captions and Premium transcripts. Premium files can include speaker names.
Why does a video show no transcript?
Some videos have no captions at all, and private, members-only or removed videos cannot be read. Premium can still make a transcript from the audio of a public video with no captions.
What is the difference between YouTube captions and Premium?
YouTube captions are the video's own track, often written by a machine that mishears names and never marks who is talking. Premium is Arcmira's own transcript from the audio: every speaker is separated and named, and in our test on 167 tech and finance videos it had about 20 times fewer misspelled names.
Can my AI read YouTube transcripts?
Yes. Add Arcmira to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex and ask for any video's transcript, or call the Transcript API with a free key. Both read the same captions and Premium transcripts as this page.