youtube.com/watch
The standard desktop URL. Playlist, timestamp and tracking parameters are ignored rather than rejected, so you can paste whatever the address bar gave you.
88 free credits on sign-up
YouTube to text, in seconds
Paste the link and get the words as readable prose — not a wall of timecodes. Built for the moment you want to read a video instead of watch it.
Convert a YouTube video to text
Paste a link and we will fetch the audio
Try:
YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X and Spotify links
Only submit video you own, can access publicly, or are authorized to process. EzScribe does not redistribute source media.
Accurate AI Transcription
100+ Languages
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Powered by Whisper
#1 in speech-to-text accuracy
How to convert a YouTube video to text
One paste, no extension, no downloading the video first.
- 01
Paste the link
Any public YouTube URL — full videos, Shorts, youtu.be short links.
- 02
Whisper transcribes the speech
The audio is transcribed directly, so a video with captions turned off works the same as one with them on.
- 03
Copy the text
Take it as plain paragraphs, or with timestamps if you want them.
Which YouTube links work
The YouTube to text converter takes any public link. These four shapes all resolve to the same video.
A YouTube to text converter built for work
From watch time to reading time
A 40-minute video is a 6-minute read. Converting YouTube to text is the fastest way to extract what a video actually says: skim it, search it, quote it, translate it, or feed it into your own notes. Writers turn interviews into articles; students turn lectures into study notes; researchers turn a playlist into something they can search.
That is what the output is shaped for. Convert a YouTube video to text here and you get continuous paragraphs rather than a timecode every few seconds, so what lands in your clipboard is what you wanted in the document. Timestamps are still one menu away when you need them.
What people use YouTube to text for
Four jobs that start with a link in the clipboard and end in a document.
Lecture notes before an exam
A recorded lecture becomes searchable notes. Convert the YouTube video to text, keep the parts you will actually revise, and throw the rest away.
Interviews into articles
Writers pull accurate quotes straight from the transcript instead of scrubbing back and forth hunting for the exact wording.
Research across a playlist
Ten videos become ten searchable documents. Find the one that mentioned the figure you half-remember without rewatching any of them.
Input for a summary
A YouTube to text export is much cleaner input for your own summariser than a captions file broken by a timecode every three seconds.
What a YouTube link can and cannot reach
Only public videos can be fetched. Private, unlisted, members-only and age-gated links fail rather than half-work, because there is no sign-in we can perform on your behalf, and a live stream has to finish before it can be transcribed.
Length is rarely the constraint people expect: jobs run up to 12 hours, so a full conference talk needs no splitting. Credits are charged per minute of audio measured after the job, so a long video costs more but never bills you for an estimate that turned out wrong.
One engine, every platform
The same box converts TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X and Spotify links, and the upload and record tabs handle files that never had a link at all. Want the transcript as an artefact instead — timestamps, chapter-length video, subtitle files? The YouTube transcript generator is built around that. Need the YouTube to text output in another language? The transcript translator returns 100+.
Watch less. Read more.
A forty-minute video is about six minutes of reading. Get the text and decide what deserves the watch.
Convert to textSign in to start. New accounts get free credits.
YouTube to text — FAQ
The questions that come before the first paste.
Paste the link on this page. The audio is transcribed and the text appears beside the video, ready to copy as paragraphs or export.
No. The speech itself is transcribed, so videos with captions disabled work exactly the same as videos with them.
Yes. Shorts and youtu.be short links are handled like any other YouTube URL.
Up to 12 hours per job. Credits are charged per minute of measured audio, so a long video costs more but does not need splitting.
Yes. Once the transcript is ready you can translate it into any of 100+ languages from the same screen, and export the result.
The transcript is saved to your account so you can return to it. You can delete it from My Transcripts at any time.
Because of what you get. The panel interleaves a timecode every few seconds, cannot be exported, and is unavailable when captions are off. This page gives you clean paragraphs that paste straight into a document.
That page is for the transcript as an artefact — timestamps, SRT and WebVTT, chapter-length video, the mechanics of the platform. This page is for the text as prose: readable paragraphs to paste into notes, a doc or a summary. Same engine, different destination.