Powered by AI
Transcribe YouTube Videos Without Captions
Get a full, word-for-word transcript of any YouTube video — even when it has no captions. AI listens to the audio, so subtitles don't matter.
Deepgram Nova-3 speech recognition — 100+ languages, speaker detection, videos up to 5 hours
Have captions? Extract them in seconds. Just need the gist? Summarize instead. YouTube Transcript, YouTube Transcriber and YouTube Summary
No Captions Required
We transcribe the actual audio with AI, not the subtitle track. If the video has speech, it works.
100+ Languages
Deepgram Nova-3 handles English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and 100+ more.
Speaker Detection
Speaker diarization labels who said what — useful for interviews, podcasts, and panels.
Up to 5 Hours
Transcribe long podcasts, lectures, and livestream recordings — videos up to 5 hours long.
How It Works
Paste the URL
Any YouTube link works — youtube.com, youtu.be, or Shorts. No captions necessary.
AI transcribes the audio
We fetch the audio and run Deepgram Nova-3 speech recognition on it. Most videos take a few minutes.
Get the full transcript
Copy the complete text or download it as TXT — the whole script, not a summary.
Need more credits? Upgrade anytime.
Pro plan includes 2,500 credits/mo · Cancel anytime
Use Cases
Podcasts and interviews
Long-form conversations often ship without captions. Get the full transcript with speakers labeled.
Livestream recordings
Streams and premieres frequently have no subtitle track. AI transcription doesn't care — it listens to the audio.
Small-channel and older videos
YouTube doesn't auto-caption everything. When a video slipped through, this is how you get its text.
Non-English videos
Auto-captions can be missing or rough outside major languages. Nova-3 transcribes 100+ languages directly from the audio.
Quoting and research
When you need exact words — not a summary — a verbatim transcript is the only reliable source.
Audio Not Stored
Audio is processed for transcription and deleted right after. We don't keep it or train on it.
Deepgram Nova-3
Industry-grade speech recognition built for accuracy on real-world audio.
No Setup
No yt-dlp, no Whisper install, no GPU. Paste a URL in your browser and run.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I transcribe a YouTube video for which no subtitles are available?
Paste the video URL into RunCLI's YouTube Transcriber. Instead of looking for a caption track, it transcribes the audio itself with Deepgram Nova-3 AI speech recognition — so it works on any video with spoken audio.
Why do caption downloaders fail on some videos?
They can only extract a subtitle track that already exists. YouTube doesn't caption every video — livestreams, fresh uploads, many languages, and lots of small-channel videos have none — so caption tools come back empty.
Couldn't I just download the audio and run Whisper myself?
You could, but that means installing yt-dlp and Whisper, managing a Python environment, and waiting on slow local processing for long videos. Here it's paste, run, done — entirely in the browser.
How accurate is the transcription?
Deepgram Nova-3 is a leading speech recognition engine and handles real-world audio well. Clear speech transcribes very accurately; heavy background noise or people talking over each other reduces quality.
Does it tell me who's speaking?
Yes. Speaker diarization labels different voices in the transcript — useful for interviews, panels, and multi-host podcasts.
Is there a video length limit?
Yes, 5 hours per video. That covers most podcasts, lectures, and livestream recordings.
How much does it cost?
2 credits per minute of video, billed by length. It's free to try with no sign-up needed to start, and signing up adds free credits — no subscription required.
What if the video does have captions?
Then our YouTube Transcript tool is faster and cheaper — it extracts the existing captions for a flat 3 credits per video. Use the Transcriber when captions are missing or you want text taken straight from the audio.