Transcriber for YouTube

One-click transcription for videos and podcasts. Works with transcribed.dev or your own self-hosted instance.

Watch less. Understand more. One-click YouTube transcripts + Claude or ChatGPT summaries. Free, no card. Watch less. Understand more. Transcriber for YouTube is a side panel that turns any YouTube video into a full searchable transcript, then sends it where you actually work. Open the side panel, click Transcribe (or set the default to Transcribe & Summarize), and get the full transcript in the panel plus a summary opened in Claude or ChatGPT — one click, no copy-paste. Toggle on Notion or Obsidian and every transcript saves automatically to your second brain. This isn't another chatbot trapped inside YouTube. The summary happens in your AI of choice (Claude and ChatGPT today, more coming), so you keep your account, your conversation history, and your prompts. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT'S IN THE BOX → One-click Transcribe & Summarize: transcript in the panel, summary opened in Claude or ChatGPT → Or Transcribe alone if you just want the text → Send to Notion or Obsidian with a click → Searchable library of every transcript you've made → Side panel stays open as you navigate between videos → Captions-first transcription (fast, free); audio fallback for videos without subtitles (Pro / Power) → Dark mode ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHO IT'S FOR Lectures, podcasts, interviews — all readable. If you spend hours each week on YouTube researching and wish you could search your watch history, this is for you. → Researchers and students working through lecture archives → Knowledge workers building Notion or Obsidian libraries from podcasts and interviews → Builders who pipe transcripts into Claude or ChatGPT for analysis → Entrepreneurs who want to speed up learning and turn insights into action items via Claude or ChatGPT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOW IT WORKS 1. Open the side panel on any YouTube video 2. Pick your action: Transcribe (text only) or Transcribe & Summarize (both in one click). Set your default via the gear icon at the bottom-left of the panel. 3. The transcript appears in the side panel; the summary opens in Claude or ChatGPT (your choice in settings) 4. Optional: toggle on Notion or Obsidian and every transcript saves automatically to your second brain. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PRICING Free: • 30 transcripts per month, no credit card • Captions-first transcription on any video that has subtitles • Send to Obsidian, Claude, or ChatGPT • Searchable library across devices Pro ($9/month): • Unlimited caption-based transcripts • 600 minutes per month of audio transcription (for videos without captions) • Send to Notion • Priority processing • API + MCP access • Everything in Free Power ($19/month): • Unlimited caption-based transcripts • 3,000 minutes per month of audio transcription • Send to Notion • Priority processing • API + MCP access • Everything in Pro Self-host (free, open source): • Run the open-source server on your own machine • Audio and transcripts never leave your computer • github.com/lifesized/transcriber ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHY IT'S DIFFERENT Most YouTube transcription extensions trap you inside their own chatbot. You lose your prompt history when the tab closes, you can't choose your own AI, and your transcripts vanish when the extension does. Transcriber for YouTube is different: → Your AI, not ours. Use Claude, ChatGPT, or whichever you prefer (more to come). The AI runs in their app under your account, so you keep your conversation history and your prompts. → Your knowledge system. You can send transcripts to Notion or Obsidian — your second brain, not our cloud. → Open source. The underlying transcription engine is AGPL-3.0 on GitHub. Audit it. Self-host it. Fork it. → Honest pricing. A free tier you can actually use. Paid tiers at $9 and $19 if you need more. No $99 hidden enterprise tier. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FOR DEVELOPERS The hosted product runs on a REST API and MCP server you can use directly. Pipe transcripts into Claude Code, Cursor, or Claude Desktop with one tool call: • transcribe(url) — get the full transcript with timestamps • summarize_transcript(id) — built-in summarization • search_transcripts(query) — search your library API and MCP setup docs: transcribed.dev/docs ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PRIVACY Cloud mode (transcribed.dev): the URL of the video you transcribe is sent to our server, along with your account email, sign-in session, and IP address (used for rate limiting). Transcripts are stored in your account so you can search them later. We don't sell, share, or use your data to train AI models. Audio transcription routes through Google Gemini Flash via OpenRouter, with a Whisper fallback — both bound by no-training terms. Self-hosted mode: everything runs on your machine. Audio never leaves your computer. No account required. No telemetry. Full privacy policy: transcribed.dev/privacy/extension ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FAQ Q: Is this free? A: Yes. The free tier gives you 30 transcripts per month with no credit card. Pro is $9/month and Power is $19/month for higher volume and audio transcription on videos without captions. Q: What AI does the summarization? A: Whichever you prefer. Transcriber hands the transcript to Claude (Anthropic) or ChatGPT (OpenAI) — you pick. The AI runs in their app under your account, not ours. You keep your conversation history. Q: What about videos without captions? A: Free tier covers any video with captions. Pro and Power include an audio transcription pool (600 min and 3,000 min per month respectively) for videos without subtitles. Transcription routes through Google Gemini Flash via OpenRouter, with Whisper as a fallback. Q: Can I use this for podcasts or platforms other than YouTube? A: The hosted Chrome extension is YouTube-focused for now. The self-hosted version (open source on GitHub) supports other sources. Broader platform support is coming to the hosted product. Q: How is this different from Glasp, Eightify, or Scribe? A: Three things. First, we hand the transcript to your AI rather than running our own chatbot, so you keep your conversation history and prompts. Second, transcripts save to Notion or Obsidian automatically, fitting your existing knowledge workflow. Third, the underlying engine is open source — you can audit it, run it locally, or self-host. Most extensions are closed-source SaaS. Q: Is this open source? A: The underlying transcription server is AGPL-3.0 open source. Source: github.com/lifesized/transcriber. The Chrome extension is the front-end for both the hosted service (transcribed.dev) and any self-hosted instance. Q: Will my data be used to train AI? A: No. Your transcripts are not used for AI training. Our transcription providers (Google Gemini via OpenRouter, Whisper) are contractually bound by no-training terms. Summarization happens in Claude or ChatGPT under your own account — those tools have their own privacy policies you can review. Q: How do I set up Obsidian? A: In the extension's settings, add your Obsidian vault name and transcripts will save automatically. For long transcripts, install Obsidian's "Advanced URI" community plugin (in Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → search "Advanced URI"), then enable "Use Advanced URI plugin" under extension Settings → More. Q: How do I cancel my subscription? A: Open transcribed.dev, sign in, navigate to Account → Billing. Cancel anytime; access continues until the end of the billing period. Or email support if you have any issues. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ LINKS • Web app: https://transcribed.dev • Documentation: https://transcribed.dev/docs • Source code: https://github.com/lifesized/transcriber • Privacy policy: https://transcribed.dev/privacy/extension • Support: https://github.com/lifesized/transcriber/issues