YouTube Subtitle Downloader — Download SRT, VTT, or TXT Free (2026)
Paste a YouTube URL. Pick the language, choose SRT, VTT, or TXT, toggle timestamps on or off, download. Free, no signup, works on any public video with captions.
To download YouTube subtitles, paste the video URL into a downloader, pick the caption language, choose SRT for editing, VTT for web video, or TXT for plain text, and click download. Uploaded captions are near-perfect (~1% WER); YouTube auto-captions run around 5% WER on clean English and degrade with accents and jargon. Personal-use downloading is generally accepted; redistribution needs permission.
How to download YouTube subtitles (3 steps)
- 1Copy the YouTube video URLAny URL format works:
youtube.com/watch?v=...,youtu.be/..., or a Shorts URL. On mobile, use the YouTube app's Share → Copy link. - 2Paste it in the tool above and pick a languageThe dropdown lists every caption track the video has. Creator-uploaded tracks appear as plain names (“English”); auto-generated tracks show the “(auto-generated)” suffix.
- 3Choose format, toggle timestamps, downloadSRT for video editors, VTT for HTML5 web players, TXT for reading or feeding into an LLM. Turn timestamps off if you're repurposing the transcript as prose.
SRT vs VTT vs TXT — which format do I need?
All three formats contain the same words. The differences are timestamps, syntax, and where the file is accepted. Pick based on what you'll do with the file next.
| Format | Best for | Timestamps | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| SRT | Video editing (Premiere, Final Cut, DaVinci Resolve), YouTube re-upload | Yes (HH:MM:SS,mmm) | Universal — pick this if unsure |
| VTT | HTML5 <video> element, WordPress video, modern web players | Yes (HH:MM:SS.mmm) | W3C standard for web video |
| TXT | Reading, note-taking, research, feeding into ChatGPT / summarizers | No | Clean prose, no timing |
Deeper on the SubRip format: what is an SRT file.
Auto-generated vs manually uploaded YouTube captions
YouTube lumps both sources under “captions” in the CC menu, but the quality gap is real. Auto-generated captions come from Google's speech recogniser and typically run around 5% word error rate on clean English; when a creator (or their captioning vendor) uploads a reviewed track, WER is closer to 1%. For reference, OpenAI's Whisper Large-v3 lands near 4.2% WER on the clean LibriSpeech test set (Radford et al., arXiv:2212.04356, Table 5).
| Source | Accuracy | How to tell |
|---|---|---|
| Creator-uploaded captions | ~1% WER when human-reviewed | Language shows plainly, e.g. "English", "Spanish" — no "(auto-generated)" suffix |
| YouTube auto-generated captions | ~5% WER on clean English; degrades on accents, jargon, non-English | Language shows "English (auto-generated)" or similar in the CC menu |
If the video has no captions at all, or you don't trust the auto track, generate a fresh transcript with our subtitle generator (upload an audio or video file directly).
Downloading captions in a specific language
Big multilingual channels often ship several caption tracks per video. The language dropdown in the tool above lists everything the video actually has — not everything YouTube can translate. It's worth understanding the difference:
- Native multi-track captions: the creator uploaded separate SRTs in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and so on. These download at full quality — pick the language directly.
- Original + auto-generated: only one language exists natively; YouTube generated the rest from the audio. Auto tracks show the “(auto-generated)” label.
- Auto-translated captions: YouTube can machine-translate an existing track into ~100 target languages. This compounds errors (base caption error + neural translation error) and is fine for casual comprehension, not for publishing. Prefer downloading the source-language SRT and translating it separately with DeepL or an LLM if quality matters.
If the video you need only has an English auto-caption and you want a clean non-English version, the higher-quality path is: download the English SRT, or start fresh with a local file via video to SRT, then translate.
Common use cases
Content repurposing
Grab the TXT (timestamps off) and paste it into your CMS as the basis for a blog post, LinkedIn carousel, or newsletter. For short-form clips, grab the SRT, cut the interesting minute in DaVinci Resolve, and re-attach the caption track directly.
Language learning
Download the source-language SRT plus a translated version, load them side-by-side in Subtitle Edit, and read along while the video plays. Timestamped format keeps you locked to the speaker's rhythm.
Accessibility
Re-embed the SRT with a video on your own site (WordPress video block, HTML5 <track> element) so viewers who need captions get them regardless of player defaults.
Research and citation
Quote a video accurately by referencing the caption timestamp. SRT gives you both the exact wording and the time offset so a reader can jump straight to the clip.
SEO and GEO
Feed the TXT into your own summariser or embeddings pipeline to enrich a page that references the video — or to give an LLM the source material for AI Overview citation. Keep the citation link back to the video; don't re-post the transcript verbatim as your own content.
Troubleshooting
The creator disabled captions, or the video is too short / non-speech for YouTube to auto-generate. Fastest fix: run the audio through our subtitle generator to build a fresh SRT from scratch.
Usually happens on age-restricted, region-blocked, or unlisted videos where the caption endpoint refuses the request. Try signing into YouTube in the same browser (for age-restricted content) or switch to a VPN region where the video is public.
Captions time-reference the original YouTube video. If you re-encoded with a different frame rate, cut ads, or spliced in an intro, the timeline shifts. Open the SRT in Subtitle Edit and use Synchronization → Adjust all times.
Encoding mismatch. Open the SRT in a good text editor (VS Code, Sublime), re-save as UTF-8, and re-import. Windows Notepad defaults to system codepage on older builds and is a common culprit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is downloading YouTube subtitles legal?
For personal use — reading, studying, translating for your own comprehension, quoting in academic work — downloading publicly displayed captions is generally accepted. YouTube's Terms of Service (§5.B) restrict automated downloading of content without permission from YouTube or the content owner; enforcement historically targets bulk video piracy, not single-URL caption extraction for personal reference. Redistributing or monetizing someone else's captions is a separate question and can raise copyright issues — get permission or ensure your use qualifies as fair use / fair dealing. This isn't legal advice.
Can I download subtitles from a private or unlisted video?
Only if you're signed in to the Google account that owns the video (or has been granted access). Private videos require the owner's account; unlisted videos work if you have the direct URL and the caption endpoint is reachable, but many third-party tools including ours will refuse them by default. If it's your own video, YouTube Studio → Subtitles gives you a direct download button in .srt, .vtt, or .sbv.
Do I need to sign up?
No. Paste a YouTube URL, pick format and language, download the file. No account, no email, no watermark, no per-day quota for individual use.
What's the difference between a subtitle and a caption download from YouTube?
In broadcast usage, subtitles translate dialogue for viewers who don't speak the source language, while captions transcribe speech (and sometimes non-speech audio cues) in the source language for accessibility. YouTube itself blurs the two — the CC menu lumps both under "captions" — and the downloaded file is the same SRT/VTT/TXT regardless. In practice you can treat the terms as interchangeable when downloading.
Can I download subtitles in bulk from a channel or playlist?
Our tool handles one URL at a time — a deliberate choice to stay lightweight and avoid YouTube rate-limiting for everyone else. For real bulk work, yt-dlp (github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) with the flags --write-subs --write-auto-subs --sub-langs "en.*" --skip-download handles playlists and full channels from the command line. Bulk automated downloading is more likely to draw ToS enforcement than single-URL personal use, so use rate limits.
Can I download YouTube subtitles on mobile?
Yes — the downloader is a web page, no install, works in mobile Safari and Chrome. Paste the URL from the YouTube app's Share sheet, pick format, tap download. The file lands in your device's Downloads folder and can be opened in any text editor or subtitle app.
Why are the timestamps slightly off?
Two common causes. First, YouTube auto-generated captions time individual words rather than clean sentence blocks, so re-grouped SRT lines can start a fraction of a second early or late. Second, if you're using the SRT with a re-encoded video (different container, frame rate, or ads inserted/removed), the caption timestamps still reference the original YouTube timeline and will drift. Tools like Subtitle Edit can re-sync in one click by matching a known anchor line.
Can I edit the SRT after downloading?
Yes — SRT is plain text with a simple block format (index number, timestamp range, text lines, blank line). Open it in any text editor (VS Code, Notepad, TextEdit) to fix typos, or use a dedicated tool like Subtitle Edit or Aegisub for timing changes. Save as UTF-8 to avoid mojibake with non-ASCII characters. See our SRT format guide for the syntax.