Transcribe YouTube Videos Free: 5 Tools Compared (2026)

You have a YouTube video and you need the text. Maybe it’s a lecture, a podcast interview, or a product demo you want to repurpose. YouTube’s built-in transcript option works sometimes, but it’s often missing, inaccurate, or impossible to export cleanly.

This guide walks through five ways to transcribe a YouTube video in 2026, with real pricing and accuracy tested across each tool. If you just want the fastest option, ScreenApp’s YouTube transcript generator lets you paste a URL and get a formatted transcript in about two minutes.

Related tools: YouTube AI Notetaker | Transcript Chrome Extension | Online Transcript Generator

Tool Pricing Comparison

Pricing verified February 2026. Costs may change — check each tool’s official site for current rates.

How ScreenApp Works

Here’s how to transcribe a YouTube video with ScreenApp in four steps.

Step 1: Copy the YouTube URL. Open the video on YouTube and copy the link from your browser’s address bar or click Share and copy the link.

Step 2: Paste into ScreenApp. Go to the YouTube transcript generator and paste the URL. You can also use the Chrome extension to do this without leaving YouTube.

Step 3: Choose your settings. Pick the output language (50+ supported) and format. ScreenApp can export as TXT, PDF, DOCX, or SRT subtitle files.

Step 4: Download your transcript. Processing takes about 2 minutes for a 30-minute video. Review the text in ScreenApp’s editor, make any corrections, and download.

ScreenApp uses AI speech recognition to handle multiple speakers, accents, and background noise. It adds punctuation and speaker labels automatically, which YouTube’s built-in transcript does not do.

YouTube’s Built-in Transcript

YouTube generates auto-captions for many videos, and you can access the raw text. Here’s how:

1. Open the YouTube video
2. Click the three dots below the video title
3. Select “Show transcript”
4. Copy the text manually

This works when it’s available. But there are real limitations:

• Accuracy is inconsistent. YouTube’s auto-captions typically hit 60-80% accuracy. Technical terms, accents, and overlapping speech cause errors.
• Many videos don’t have it. If the creator disabled captions or the audio is unclear, the transcript option won’t appear.
• No punctuation or formatting. You get a wall of text with timestamps but no sentence breaks.
• No speaker labels. Multi-speaker videos are impossible to follow.
• No export options. You have to manually select and copy the text. There’s no download button.

For quick reference on a single video, YouTube’s transcript is fine. For anything you plan to publish, share, or study from, you’ll want a dedicated tool.

Other Tools Worth Knowing

Otter.ai is strongest for live meeting transcription but also handles YouTube URLs. The free plan gives you 300 minutes per month with speaker identification. Pro costs $10/month annually and adds custom vocabulary and integrations. Otter’s main weakness for YouTube: it’s English-focused, so multilingual videos are better handled elsewhere.

Descript takes a different approach. You upload a video file (no direct URL paste), and it generates a transcript that doubles as an editing timeline. Edit the text and the video edits itself. The free plan includes 1 hour of transcription. Paid plans start at $12/month annually. Good for creators who need to clip and repurpose YouTube content, not just read it.

Happy Scribe supports 60+ languages and processes YouTube URLs directly. The AI transcription plan starts at $10/month (annual billing) for 120 minutes. They also offer human transcription at $1.75/minute for projects that need near-perfect accuracy. According to research published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, automated transcription accuracy has improved significantly since 2022, but human review still catches errors that AI misses in medical and legal contexts.

Tactiq runs as a browser extension. It transcribes YouTube videos while you watch them and captures meeting audio from Google Meet and Zoom. The free tier allows 10 transcripts per month. Paid plans are $12/month. Tactiq works well if you want to take notes while watching rather than processing an entire video after the fact.

When YouTube Has No Transcript

Some YouTube videos have no auto-generated captions at all. This happens when:

• The creator manually disabled captions
• The audio is music-only or mostly ambient sound
• The video was uploaded before YouTube’s auto-caption system was widely available
• The language isn’t supported by YouTube’s speech recognition

In these cases, a tool like ScreenApp or Happy Scribe can still generate a transcript because they use their own speech recognition engine rather than relying on YouTube’s caption data. They download the audio from the video URL and process it independently.

If you regularly need to transcribe YouTube videos that lack captions, a dedicated transcription tool is the only reliable option. ScreenApp’s audio upload feature also lets you upload downloaded audio or video files directly.

What to Do With Your Transcript

A raw transcript has more uses than you might expect:

• Blog posts and articles. Repurpose a video interview or tutorial into written content. ScreenApp’s YouTube to blog post generator can help with this.
• Study notes. Students can search transcripts for specific topics instead of scrubbing through a 90-minute lecture.
• Subtitles and captions. Export as SRT and upload back to YouTube or any other platform.
• Meeting documentation. Record a Zoom call, paste the link, and get a searchable record. See our meeting transcription extension for live meetings.
• SEO and accessibility. Adding transcripts to your website makes video content indexable by search engines and accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences.

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