Can I transcribe a YouTube video longer than 3 hours? Yes, by link.
Yes: paste the YouTube link and a video or live replay of up to 10 hours is transcribed with no download or upload, at about 2 minutes per audio hour, so a 4-hour video is ready in about 8 minutes. It uses 240 minutes, the first 20 of them free, and the $6 pack (500 minutes) covers the rest with 260 left; a stream replay over 6 hours starts once a pack is on the account.
Long YouTube videos
From link to chapters.
Only the link
Copy the address from the browser or the Share button and paste it. Nothing is downloaded to your computer or uploaded from it, so the size of a long video does not matter. For a private video, download your own copy and upload it from the upload page.
Live replays and streams
Live replays work the same way as uploaded videos. A replay longer than 6 hours starts once a pack is on the account; shorter ones can use the free first 20 minutes as a preview.
The arithmetic by length
Three and a half hours is 210 minutes; five hours is 300; eight hours is 480. Each fits the $6 pack (500 minutes). A month of four-hour weekly streams, about 960 minutes, fits the $12 pack with 1,040 left.
What you get back
A brief with thesis and takeaways, timestamped chapters you can paste into the description, the names, numbers and dates mentioned, the questions the video answers and a chat. Hosts and guests are named in the summary, key quotes and chapters.
Three hours and up
Why long YouTube videos defeat the usual tricks.
✗ Built for short clips
Auto-captions and copy-paste workarounds struggle once a video runs past an evening.
- Auto-captions with no punctuation
- Transcript panels copied by hand
- Download, convert, then upload
- Tools that cap at an hour or two
- No chapters for a long video
- Nothing to search across hours
✓ The link, then the text
A long video treated as one recording.
- Videos up to 10 hours
- Roughly eight minutes for four hours
- 240 minutes on the $6 pack
- Chapters for the description
- SRT and VTT for the full length
- Exports in TXT, DOCX and JSON
Sample output
From hour three of a long video.
Made-up lines to show the format; not from a real channel.
Export
One transcript. Five clean formats.
Every pack exports all five — no format is held back for a higher tier.
Plain text
De-ummed paragraphs. Ready to paste.
SRT captions
Timed to the speech. Every video editor reads this.
WebVTT
HTML5 player + YouTube uploads.
Show notes
Formatted with chapters and pull-quotes.
Machine-readable
Timestamped text for your own tools.
Pricing
Honest pricing, no surprises.
A pack from $6 (500 minutes) opens the full transcript. After that, no subscription and no auto-renew — every tier is a one-time minute pack, and credits never expire. Buy once, use the minutes whenever you need them.
Casual pack
$6/500 min
8 hours of audio — $0.72 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 500 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$12/2,000 min
33 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 2,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Long YouTube videos, answered.
Is there a length limit for YouTube links?
Ten hours per video, or 5 GB if you upload it instead. A replay that ran longer needs to be downloaded, where you have the right to, and uploaded as two files of under 10 hours each.
How long does a 4-hour YouTube video take?
About 8 minutes of processing at roughly 2 minutes per audio hour. Fetching the audio from the link adds a short wait before that. A ten-hour replay, the longest that fits, is done in roughly twenty minutes.
What does it cost?
Minutes of video. Four hours is 240: the first 20 are free for a first-time visitor, then the $6 pack (500 minutes) covers it and leaves 260. A six-hour replay uses 360 minutes, which the same pack also covers. Credits never expire, and there is no subscription.
Can I use the chapters on YouTube?
Yes. Chapters come with timestamps you can copy into the description, and the SRT or VTT file can be added to the video as captions. The brief and the list of questions the video answers make a quick start for a pinned comment or a blog post.
Does music or game audio show up?
Music and sound effects are not transcribed; speech is. A video with a background track still comes out as clean text, and a gameplay or music segment simply shows as a gap between timestamps.
What about other languages and privacy?
All 99 supported languages are detected automatically, including videos that move between them. The audio is transcribed on our own servers and never used for training.
Related
More on YouTube and long video.
Longer than three hours? Paste the link.
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