YouTube transcript generator
Paste any YouTube link below and the full transcript lands in a second or two, with the video title and length attached. Search it, edit it, copy it, or download it as a .txt or .md file. No account needed for your first 5 transcripts, and no credit card for the free tier after that. Works with watch URLs, Shorts, and livestream replays, as long as the video has a caption track.
YouTube videos with captions come back instantly: 5 free transcripts with no account, 5 a day with a free account. Podcast episodes and direct audio files are transcribed by AI: free accounts get 15 minutes a month.
How it works
- Paste the link. Any YouTube URL works: a watch page, a Short, a share link, or a livestream replay.
- tautau fetches the caption track. The official captions are pulled directly, which is why the result arrives in a second or two instead of the length of the video.
- Take the transcript with you. Copy it to the clipboard or download it as .txt or .md, named after the video.
More than a wall of text
The transcript opens in a workbench rather than a dead-end result card. The Content tab lets you search inside the text, edit it in place, copy it, or download it. The Analytics tab shows word frequency and stats, useful when you are sizing up a talk before quoting it. If you are signed in, transcripts are also saved to your private history so you can find them again later. For the longer story, the guide to YouTube transcripts compares this with YouTube's built-in panel, and the main transcript tool covers podcasts and audio files too.
Captions, not magic
This tool reads the caption track that already exists on the video. It does not listen to the audio, so two honest limits follow. First, a video with no captions has nothing to fetch, and the tool says so rather than guessing. Second, the words are only as good as whoever made the captions: creator-uploaded tracks are usually clean, while auto-generated ones skip punctuation and mangle names. If you need transcription from raw audio instead, that is what the podcast and audio transcriber does, with 15 free minutes a month on a free account.
Frequently asked questions
Is the YouTube transcript generator free?
Yes. You get 5 transcripts with no account at all, 5 a day with a free account (no credit card), and 20 a day on paid plans. YouTube transcripts come from the caption track, which is cheap to fetch, so the free allowance is generous.
Do I need an account?
No. Paste a link and transcribe your first 5 videos without signing up. A free account raises that to 5 transcripts a day and saves finished transcripts to your private history.
What if the video has no captions?
Then there is no transcript to fetch, and the tool will tell you so. tautau reads the official caption track and does not extract YouTube audio, so a video with no caption track cannot be transcribed. Most public videos have auto-generated captions, but some do not.
Which languages are supported?
Whatever the caption track is written in. If a video carries captions in several languages, the tool uses the track YouTube serves for the video. There is no translation step: a Japanese video gives you a Japanese transcript.
How accurate is the transcript?
Exactly as accurate as the captions it came from. Creator-uploaded captions are usually excellent. YouTube’s auto-generated captions are decent on clear speech but arrive without punctuation and often stumble on names. The workbench lets you fix anything before you export.
Or skip the keyboard entirely
tautau puts a mic button next to every text field on the web. Click it, speak, and your words land in the box with punctuation handled. A free account gives you 5 dictations a day, no credit card required.