Free YouTube Transcript Extractor

Download transcripts from any YouTube video or playlist. No YouTube API key needed. Add a Claude API key to get AI summaries, key points, and chapter breakdowns.

What it does

Uses the youtube-transcript-api library to pull captions from any YouTube video without requiring a YouTube Data API key. It handles single videos, full playlists, and batch processing from a URL list.

With a Claude API key, you can also get AI-generated summaries, extract the top 5-8 key points, generate a chapter breakdown, or run an interactive Q&A session where you ask questions about the video content.

Features

• Extract transcripts from any video with captions (auto-generated or manual)
• Process entire playlists automatically
• Batch process from a file of URLs
• Export as plain text, Markdown (with timestamps), or JSON
• Multi-language support - specify preferred language(s)
• Optional: AI summary, key points, chapter breakdown (Claude API)
• Optional: Interactive Q&A mode about video content

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/Get-Ai-Tools/youtube-transcript-extractor
cd youtube-transcript
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Basic transcript extraction
python extractor.py --url https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID

# With AI summary and key points
python extractor.py --url https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID \
  --summarize --keypoints --api-key sk-ant-...

# Full playlist to markdown
python extractor.py --url https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAYLIST_ID \
  --format markdown --out ./transcripts

# Q&A mode
python extractor.py --url https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID \
  --mode qa --api-key sk-ant-...

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• youtube-transcript-api, requests (auto-installed)
• Claude API key - only needed for AI features. Free at console.anthropic.com