About this tool
What is the YouTube Transcript Extractor?
The ReelStack YouTube Transcript Extractor pulls the full captions track from any public YouTube video and gives you the text with timestamps — typically in 2-3 seconds. Paste a URL or video ID, hit fetch, copy the result. It works for any video with auto-generated or human-uploaded captions, including livestream VODs.
Filmmakers use this for ripping reference quotes out of director commentaries, journalists for sourcing soundbites, and creators for repurposing their own talking-head videos into blog posts, tweets, or shortform scripts. The transcript includes per-line timestamps so you can jump straight to the moment a quote appears.
Free, rate-limited at 10 per hour, no signup required. If you need higher volume for a research project, sign up — authenticated users get 50/day.
FAQ · YOUTUBE TRANSCRIPT EXTRACTOR
Questions about the YouTube Transcript Extractor
Can I get the transcript of any YouTube video?
Any video with captions — which is nearly all of them, since YouTube auto-generates English captions on upload. Manually-uploaded captions (better quality, often in multiple languages) work too. Private videos and members-only content won't work because the captions aren't publicly readable.
Does the transcript include timestamps?
Yes. Each line is timestamped to the second so you can jump to that moment in the video. You can also export the raw timed format (SRT/VTT) or the plain text-only version depending on what you need.
Is this free?
Yes. Free for up to 10 transcripts per hour without signup, 50/day for signed-in users. We use a cloud API to fetch the captions track and rate-limit usage to keep the tool free for everyone.
What about non-English videos?
Auto-generated captions exist for every language YouTube supports (~80). The tool returns whatever caption track YouTube has — if multiple language tracks exist, you can pick which one to pull.
Can I download the transcript as a file?
Yes — copy to clipboard, download as plain text (.txt), or download as SRT/VTT subtitle files if you're editing video and want to re-import captions.