Download YouTube subtitles as SRT, VTT or TXT
Export an available caption track from a public YouTube video as .srt for editors and players, .vtt for the web, or plain text — free for 25 videos a month.
Subtitle files are useful far beyond watching with the sound off. Video editors need an .srt to burn captions into a clip, translators need the original track as a starting point, accessibility teams need files they can review and fix, and researchers want cue-by-cue data with timestamps. Many captioned videos already expose that timed text to viewers; the practical problem is exporting it in a reusable format.
The 30-second version
- Copy the video's URL from YouTube — watch links,
youtu.belinks, Shorts, and live replays all work. - Paste it into the box on the VidWords homepage and hit Get transcript.
- If the video carries captions in more than one language, pick the track you want from the language dropdown.
- Click Download and choose
.srt,.vtt,.txt,.csv, or.json. SRT, VTT, CSV, and JSON keep the original cue timings; TXT deliberately drops them. - It's free for 3 videos a month with no account, or 25 a month with a free account. YouTube's own Show transcript panel has no SRT or VTT export button, which is why a separate export step is needed at all.
Step-by-step: download subtitles from any video
- Copy the video's URL from YouTube — watch links,
youtu.belinks, Shorts, and live replays all work. - Paste it into the box on the VidWords homepage and hit Get transcript.
- If the video has captions in more than one language, pick the track you want from the language dropdown.
- Click Download and choose your format:
.srt,.vtt,.txt,.csv, or.json.
The file lands in your downloads folder immediately. The SRT and VTT exports keep every cue's original start and end times, so they stay in sync when you load them against the video — no re-timing needed.
Which format should you pick?
- SRT — the universal subtitle format. Practically every video editor (Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut, CapCut) and media player (VLC, mpv) accepts it. If you're editing video or re-uploading with captions, choose SRT.
- VTT — the web-native format (WebVTT). This is what HTML5
<track>elements and most embedded web players expect. Choose VTT if the captions are going onto a website or web app. - TXT — just the words, merged into clean paragraphs with no cue numbers or timecodes. Best when you want to read, quote, summarize, or paste the content somewhere as ordinary text. (More on that in our guide to converting a YouTube video to text.)
- CSV — one row per cue with start time, end time, and text in separate columns. Opens straight into Excel or Google Sheets, which makes it the easy choice for spotting patterns, annotating, or hand-editing timings.
- JSON — the same cue-level data in a structured form that scripts and applications can parse directly. Pick this for data pipelines, search indexing, or any programmatic work.
A reasonable rule of thumb: SRT or VTT when the file goes back next to a video, TXT when a human will read it, CSV or JSON when software will.
Choosing a caption language
Some videos carry several caption tracks — an author-uploaded track, auto-generated captions, or other language tracks. The language dropdown lists the accessible tracks VidWords receives for that video, with auto-generated tracks marked. Pick a different track and the view reloads; the download reflects that selection. Creator-supplied captions are typically more reliable, while YouTube recommends reviewing automatic captions before relying on them.
Downloading subtitles for a whole playlist or channel
If you need subtitle files for dozens or hundreds of videos — say, every episode of a series you're localizing, or a full course you're archiving — don't do it one tab at a time. Bulk extraction handles up to 500 videos from a playlist or channel, or 200 pasted or uploaded URLs. You get all the files together in your chosen format instead of making a separate trip through the same workflow for every video.
For fully automated workflows, the REST API does the same job from code: send video URLs, get back structured transcript data you can render into any subtitle format your pipeline needs.
Can't I just download subtitles from YouTube directly?
Not directly as a viewer. YouTube's Show transcript panel lets you read captions and jump to a line's timestamp, but it does not provide an SRT/VTT export button. Creators can download their own caption tracks through YouTube Studio; Google's API download method likewise requires permission to edit the video. For a public video you do not control, a separate export workflow is required.
Editing subtitles after you download them
One underrated benefit of having a real file: you can fix it. SRT and VTT are plain text, so any text editor opens them — correct a misheard name, tidy the punctuation in an auto-generated track, or translate cue by cue while the timings stay intact. Most video editors also let you re-import the corrected file and burn it in. If you'd rather work in a spreadsheet, download the CSV instead, edit the text column in Sheets or Excel, and keep the start and end times untouched. Starting from YouTube's existing track is almost always faster than transcribing and timing captions from scratch.
FAQ
Are the downloaded timestamps accurate?
Yes — SRT, VTT, CSV, and JSON exports preserve the exact cue timings from YouTube's caption track, so the file lines up with the video without adjustment.
What if a video has no subtitles at all?
If the creator disabled captions and YouTube never auto-generated any, there's no track to download — you'll get a clear message rather than an empty file, and the attempt doesn't count against your quota.
How many downloads are free?
3 videos per month with no account, or 25 a month with a free account, in every format. Paid plans raise that to as much as 10,000 per month and include bulk and API access.