YouTube transcript downloader — no extension needed

Nothing to install: paste a video, playlist or channel link in the browser and download every transcript in one ZIP.

In short: ChannelText downloads the transcripts of YouTube videos, Shorts, playlists and whole channels as TXT, SRT, WebVTT or JSON files, in one ZIP with a CSV report. It costs $0.008 per delivered transcript from a prepaid balance topped up with $10 (1,250 transcripts): a one-time payment in USD, no subscription, no free sample, and videos without a transcript are not charged. Up to 50 links and 500 videos per run; it uses the captions YouTube publishes, so a video without captions has no transcript. Also available as a REST API and an MCP server.

Result

#	Video	Result	Files

API keys

Get transcripts from your own code with the ChannelText API, paid from the same balance. A new key is shown once; keep it secret and revoke it if it leaks.

Name	Key	Created	Last used

No extension, no install

Browser extensions add a button to one video page at a time. ChannelText runs on this page: paste links, check the count and cost, and download. It works the same on any browser and on your phone.

Files named so you can find them

Each transcript is saved as date-title-videoId, for example 2026-01-15-how-to-bake-bread-a1b2c3d4e5f.txt, so files sort by publish date. The ZIP holds:

transcripts/ one file per video in each format you chose: Text (.txt), Subtitles (.srt), WebVTT (.vtt) and timestamps (.json)
all-transcripts.txt every transcript in one text file
report.csv one line per video, including the ones without a transcript and the reason

Pricing

$0.008 per delivered transcript ($8 per 1,000). No subscription.

Prepaid balance: add $10 (1,250 transcripts) when your balance is short. You only pay at that point, after you have seen how many videos your link has and the most it can cost.
Videos without captions, private or removed videos and videos YouTube blocked are free. You pay only for transcripts you get. “Update this channel” skips the videos of that channel you already received.
No free sample. Transcripts come from the captions YouTube publishes (the creator's or YouTube's automatic ones); there is no speech-to-text, so a video with no captions has no transcript.

Questions

Does YouTube let you download transcripts?

Not as a file for viewers. YouTube shows the transcript in the player (“Show transcript”) where you can read and copy it; creators can download the captions of their own videos in YouTube Studio. ChannelText downloads them as files for any public video with captions.

How can I save a YouTube transcript as a PDF?

Download the Text file, open it in Word, Google Docs or any text editor and export or print it as PDF. ChannelText does not create PDF files itself.

How to download a youtube transcript?

Paste the video link above and select “Check videos and cost”. After signing in you see the price, then “Get transcripts” and download the file or the ZIP.