For researchers

YouTube transcripts for research and content analysis

Studying how people talk about a topic on YouTube? Collect the transcripts of a set of videos, a playlist or a channel into one spreadsheet, with each video's title and link, ready for coding, word counts or your analysis software.

Build a transcript dataset → See pricing

10 videos free every day without an account · 25 free credits with a free account · credits never expire

Try it on a video now

Paste a YouTube link and read the transcript right here. No account, nothing to install.

10 free videos today · no account needed

How it works

01
Collect your sample

Paste a list of video links, or on paid plans a playlist or channel (choose where to start and how many videos).
02
Choose the layout

Timestamps off: one row per video with title, link, word count and full text. On: one row per caption line with start and end times.
03
Export and analyse

Excel or CSV (UTF-8) for spreadsheets, R, Python or qualitative analysis tools; JSON for your own code.

Why use Free YT Bulk Transcripts

One row per video or per line

Pick the unit of analysis: whole videos with word counts, or individual caption lines with times.

Source for every row

Each row carries the video's title, ID and link, so every quote can be traced and cited.

Skipped videos listed

Excel adds a Skipped videos sheet with the reason (no captions, private, unavailable): useful for reporting your sample.

Affordable at scale

Pay per transcript, from about $0.002 each with the Pro pack. Videos without captions cost nothing.

Method notes

Transcripts are YouTube's captions: auto-generated ones contain recognition errors, which you may need to mention in your method section.
Captions marked as auto-generated vs. creator-added are not distinguished in the export; spot-check against the video for key quotes.
Respect copyright and your ethics board's rules on publishing quotes from public videos.
Very long Excel cells are split into (part 2), (part 3) rows because Excel cells hold at most 32,767 characters.

Frequently asked questions

How can I collect transcripts of many YouTube videos for research?

Paste the video links in Bulk videos (10 per run free, up to 250 with a pack), or a playlist or channel on paid plans, and download one Excel or CSV file with every transcript.

Can I get one row per caption line?

Yes. Turn on Timestamps and Excel/CSV will have one row per caption line with Start, End and Text, plus Title and Video ID columns.

How do I cite the source of a quote?

Every row includes the video's title, ID and link. With Timestamps on you also have the exact time of each line.

Are the transcripts accurate?

They're YouTube's captions. Creator-added captions are usually accurate; auto-generated ones can contain errors, especially with names, accents and background noise.

What happens to videos without captions?

They're listed on a Skipped videos sheet in Excel with the reason, and cost 0 credits.

More guides

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