Turn a whole YouTube playlist into text

Paste one playlist link. ChannelText lists every video in it, tells you how many there are and the most it can cost, and gets each transcript.

In short: ChannelText downloads the transcripts of YouTube videos, Shorts, playlists and whole channels as TXT, SRT, WebVTT or JSON files, in one ZIP with a CSV report. It costs $0.008 per delivered transcript from a prepaid balance topped up with $10 (1,250 transcripts): a one-time payment in USD, no subscription, no free sample, and videos without a transcript are not charged. Up to 50 links and 500 videos per run; it uses the captions YouTube publishes, so a video without captions has no transcript. Also available as a REST API and an MCP server.

Result

#	Video	Result	Files

API keys

Get transcripts from your own code with the ChannelText API, paid from the same balance. A new key is shown once; keep it secret and revoke it if it leaks.

Name	Key	Created	Last used

One link, every video

A playlist link covers every video in the playlist, up to 500 per run. Add more playlists, channels or single videos on new lines.

A report for every video

Each video shows its result as it arrives: transcript ready, or a plain reason (no captions, private, unavailable, blocked). The CSV report keeps every line. Videos without a transcript are free.

Courses, lectures and podcast series

Turn a course or a podcast season into one text file (all-transcripts.txt) to search it, take notes or give it to an AI assistant, plus one file per episode.

Pricing

$0.008 per delivered transcript ($8 per 1,000). No subscription.

Prepaid balance: add $10 (1,250 transcripts) when your balance is short. You only pay at that point, after you have seen how many videos your link has and the most it can cost.
Videos without captions, private or removed videos and videos YouTube blocked are free. You pay only for transcripts you get. “Update this channel” skips the videos of that channel you already received.
No free sample. Transcripts come from the captions YouTube publishes (the creator's or YouTube's automatic ones); there is no speech-to-text, so a video with no captions has no transcript.

Questions

How can I convert a YouTube playlist to text?

Paste the playlist link above, keep “Text” checked and download the ZIP: one text file per video and all of them in one file.

How can I extract a YouTube playlist?

ChannelText reads the playlist and counts its videos before you pay. It extracts the transcripts, not the videos.

Can ChatGPT transcribe video from YouTube?

ChatGPT does not reliably open a YouTube link and read its captions by itself. Download the transcript as text and paste or upload the file instead.