How long can a YouTube live stream be? long enough to need chapters.
A YouTube live stream can run for many hours, but YouTube keeps a full replay only up to the archive length its help pages state, so a very long stream may be saved only in part. Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes, and credits never expire.
Long live streams
YouTube's limits, ours, and the stream in between.
YouTube's side
Streams can go on for a long time, but the archived replay has a maximum length set by YouTube, and anything past it may not be kept. YouTube updates these rules, so check its help page on live stream archives before a marathon broadcast.
Our side
Paste the replay link and a stream up to 10 hours is transcribed from the link, with nothing to download. A replay longer than 6 hours starts once a pack is on the account. Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes, and credits never expire.
Longer than ten hours
For a stream on your own channel, download it from YouTube Studio, export the audio and split it into parts under 10 hours. The box here takes 500 MB; larger parts go up on the upload page, each up to 10 hours or 5 GB.
What comes back
A brief with the thesis and takeaways, chapters with timestamps for every segment, the names, numbers and dates said on stream, and a chat to find the moment a topic came up. Hosts and guests are named in the summary, key quotes and chapters.
Live replays
A long replay is hard to make use of.
✗ Without a transcript
What usually happens to a five-hour replay.
- Auto-captions that are hard to export
- Highlights found by scrubbing
- Tools capped well under the stream
- Replays downloaded and cut first
- Background music in the captions
- Clips posted days late
✓ With WhipScribe
Link in, text and timestamps out.
- Replay links up to 10 hours
- Nothing to download
- About 2 minutes per audio hour
- Chapters for each segment
- Music and game sound skipped
- SRT and VTT for edits
Sample output
From a long charity live stream.
Illustrative lines written for this page; not from a real channel or broadcast.
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 $4 (300 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
$4/300 min
5 hours of audio — $0.80 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 300 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$18/3,000 min
50 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 3,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
Bulk pack
$32/6,000 min
100 hours of audio — $0.32 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 6,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Long YouTube streams, answered.
Can I paste the link while the stream is still live?
Wait until the stream has ended and the replay is available. A replay may take a little while to process on YouTube's side after a long broadcast, and pasting it too early can pick up an incomplete version.
Why does my 7-hour replay need a pack?
Stream recordings over 6 hours start once a pack is on the account. Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes, and credits never expire.
What does a 9-hour stream cost?
Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes, and credits never expire. It is text in about 18 minutes.
What about a weekly stream?
A 3-hour stream every week is about 720 minutes a month, so the $18 pack (3,000 minutes) lasts close to four months of it. Credits never expire, so a quiet month costs nothing.
Is chat or music transcribed?
Live chat is not in the audio, so it is not in the transcript. Music, sound effects and game noise are not transcribed; speech is, in any of 99 languages detected automatically.
Where does the audio go?
It is transcribed on our own servers and never used for training. Export SRT or VTT for captions, or TXT, DOCX and JSON for show notes and clips. The chapters double as a ready list of timestamps for the video description.
Related
More on live streams.
A long stream just ended? Paste the replay link.
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