YouTube Caption Downloader
Paste a video link → download its caption track as SRT or VTT, ready to drop into an editor. Plain text and JSON too. No signup.
Which file do you actually need?
SRT is the safe default: Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut and nearly every social upload flow accept it. VTT is what browsers and web players want. YouTube itself takes either. Already holding the wrong one? The VTT ↔ SRT converter swaps between them in your browser.
Auto-generated captions count
Most videos have never had a human caption file uploaded — what's there is YouTube's automatic speech recognition, and that's what downloads here. It's good on clear speech and weaker on heavy accents, crosstalk and jargon, which is worth knowing before you burn it into a cut. When an uploader has disabled captions altogether, no tool can produce them.
Re-using someone else's captions
A caption track is part of the uploader's video. Pulling one for translation, accessibility work, quoting, research or study is everyday practice; republishing a whole video's script as your own content is a different thing. Worth a thought before you publish.
Captions for a whole channel
This pulls one video. A Channel X-Ray report pulls every transcript on a channel at once, alongside every comment classified into what that audience keeps asking for — one report, pay once.
FAQ
How do I download captions from a YouTube video?
Paste the video URL above. The caption track appears in seconds and you can save it as SRT or VTT (both timestamped subtitle formats), TXT or JSON. No account needed.
Which format does my editor want?
Premiere, DaVinci Resolve and most social upload flows expect SRT. Web players and browsers expect VTT. If you're unsure, take SRT. It's the more widely accepted of the two.
Can I download auto-generated captions?
Yes. Most videos only have YouTube's automatic captions, and those are exactly what this reads. Videos where the uploader disabled captions entirely can't be downloaded by any tool.
Can I get captions in another language?
This tool saves the video's primary caption track. For translated tracks, YouTube's own player subtitles menu shows what's available on that video.
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See all of them on the free tools page.