YouTube transcripts ready for AI

Turn a video, a playlist or a whole channel into one text file you can upload to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or NotebookLM.

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 file for a whole channel

Every ZIP includes all-transcripts.txt: every transcript in one text file, each one starting with the video's title, channel, link and publish date. Upload that single file instead of dozens, and the assistant can tell you which video said what.

Clean text for prompts

The Text files have no timestamps, so they use fewer tokens than subtitle files. Choose SRT or the JSON file with timestamps when you need to point to the exact moment in a video.

From your own AI tools

Developers and agents can fetch the same transcripts with the REST API or give Claude, Cursor and other assistants direct access through the MCP server, paid from the same balance.

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

Is there an AI that can transcribe YouTube videos?

Most YouTube videos already have a transcript made by speech recognition: YouTube's automatic captions. ChannelText downloads those (or the creator's own captions) as files; it does not run speech recognition itself.

Can ChatGPT transcribe YouTube?

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

Is a YouTube transcript safe?

The files are plain text (.txt, .srt, .vtt, .json): they contain no code or links other than the video's own URL. Only the captions YouTube publishes are used.

How to get youtube script for chatgpt?

Paste the video, playlist or channel link above, keep “Text” checked and download. Upload all-transcripts.txt to ChatGPT to give it every video at once.