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YouTube Transcription

Commercial use OK 380+ models No watermark No sign-up needed
Model:
+ GPT-5, Claude, Gemini
Paste any public YouTube URL and we fetch the audio server-side + transcribe it. Works with watch URLs, youtu.be short links, and YouTube Shorts. Members-only / age-gated / private videos are blocked by YouTube and we will surface a clean error.
Only transcribe content you have rights to — your own uploads, Creative Commons videos, or with permission. Free.ai does not check copyright.
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Token estimate for this YouTube video
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YouTube transcript

Downloading YouTube audio and transcribing...

You can close this tab — check email-when-done in the banner above.

Built for YouTube creators, researchers + students

Creators — own-content transcripts

Paste your own video URL, get a clean transcript for blog-post repurposing, show notes, or SRT subtitles in 99 languages.

Research + citations

Transcribe a CC-licensed lecture or conference talk. Cite with confidence — every quote has a timestamp tied to the source.

Translate foreign-language videos

Transcribe a Spanish, Japanese, or Hindi video in the source language, then pipe the text through /translate/ for a clean translation.

How it works

  1. Paste a public YouTube URL — watch, youtu.be, or Shorts.
  2. Click Check video — we probe the title, duration, and thumbnail so you confirm before spending tokens.
  3. Pick language, engine, and output format. Optionally enable speaker diarization.
  4. Submit. We fetch audio with yt-dlp server-side and transcribe — typically 1-5 minutes for a 30-minute video.

Free.ai vs YouTube auto-captions, Happy Scribe

Feature Free.ai YouTube auto-captions Happy Scribe
Price$0.003/minFree$17/hour
QualityWhisper-large-v3VariableWhisper + human-edit option
SRT/VTT exportScraper needed
Speaker diarization—Paid tier
Languages99~100 (varies)120+
Public APIData API only
Sign-up requiredNoYouTube accountYes
Reflects publicly-listed 2026 plans.
Advanced options
Result
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Want better results? Premium models (GPT-5, Claude, Gemini) deliver higher quality. View Plans

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Transcribe any YouTube video to text for free.

How to Use YouTube Transcription

1
Enter your input

Type text, upload a file, or describe what you want. No account needed.

2
Click generate

Our AI processes your request in seconds using the best open-source models.

3
Download & share

Download, copy, or share your result. Free for personal and commercial use.

Use this tool via API

Automate this tool from your own code. OpenAI-compatible REST endpoint, Bearer-token auth, no extra SDK required. Token costs match the web interface.

API Documentation Get API Key 
curl -X POST https://api.free.ai/v1/stt/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-free-..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"file": "@audio.mp3", "language": "auto"}'

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YouTube Transcription — FAQ

YouTube mode takes a URL first — paste a public YouTube link, we probe the video (title, duration, thumbnail), show it to you, then fetch the audio with yt-dlp on our servers and transcribe. No manual download + upload required.

Any public YouTube watch URL — youtube.com/watch?v=, youtu.be/, youtube.com/shorts/. Live streams must be finished (VOD replays work). Members-only, age-gated, or private videos are blocked by YouTube and we surface a clean error.

Most commonly: the video is age-gated, members-only, private/unlisted, or region-blocked in our server region (NJ, USA). Other causes: YouTube changed its internal API (we update yt-dlp weekly), or the video is a live stream in progress. Error messages point to the specific cause.

You may only transcribe content you have rights to — your own uploads, Creative Commons videos, or content where you have permission. Downloading copyrighted material without permission may violate YouTube Terms of Service and copyright law in your jurisdiction. Use responsibly.

YouTube auto-captions are free + built-in, but (1) quality varies and they are not editable, (2) you cannot export SRT/VTT programmatically without third-party scrapers, (3) speaker diarization is not included. Our output is Whisper-large-v3 quality with diarization, multi-format export, and 99-language support.

Happy Scribe starts at $17/hour of audio with their YouTube import feature. We transcribe at ~$0.003/min (~$0.18/hour) on Whisper — essentially 100x cheaper for the equivalent accuracy.

99 on Whisper-large-v3. Great for auto-detection — leave the language on "Auto-detect" and we will figure it out. Useful for multilingual creators and educators.

Not in one shot — paste each URL individually. For bulk jobs, use our /api/ endpoint with a loop (see /api/ docs for examples).

We allow YouTube fetches up to 4 hours. Longer videos (recordings of all-day conferences etc.) need to be downloaded manually and uploaded via /transcribe/.

Yes — POST a YouTube URL to /v1/stt/ with the url field populated. Include model/diarize/language flags as usual. Free tier allowance applies.

YouTube Transcription is scoped to YouTube — paste those URLs into /transcribe/ instead (the URL tab there supports 1,300+ platforms via yt-dlp).

YouTube applies per-IP rate limits to downloads. Under typical load we transcribe hundreds of URLs/day without hitting limits. If you hit "429 Too Many Requests", wait 15 minutes and retry, or download locally and upload.

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