YouTube Live Auto Captions
Don’t want to sign up for YouTube Live Auto Captions? Drop the file here.
The first 20 minutes of any recording are transcribed free: a recording up to 20 minutes transcribes in full, a longer one is previewed, and a pack from $6 (500 minutes) transcribes the rest and opens every export, and credits never expire.
Auto-generated live captions inside YouTube Live streams.
Best for creators and small broadcasters streaming to YouTube Live who want a baseline accessibility layer. Pricing: free with YouTube Live.
What it is
YouTube Live provides automatic captions for eligible streams as part of its accessibility tooling. Streamers can also push CEA-608 or third-party CART captions via the ingestion API for higher quality.
Watch out for: Quality is best-effort and not certified for any broadcaster regulatory framework.
Install / use
Go to YouTube Live Auto Captions youtube.comWhat people actually do with YouTube Live Auto Captions-style transcription
The tool is the means. These are the jobs — each one priced at published rates, each one wired up on its own page.
Features
| Speaker diarization | No |
| Word-level timestamps | No |
| Streaming / real-time | Yes |
| Languages supported | None |
| HIPAA eligible | No |
YouTube Live Auto Captions vs Whipscribe
| Feature | YouTube Live Auto Captions | Whipscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Products | Transcription APIs |
| Pricing | Not verified | $6–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · first 20 minutes free |
| Speaker identification | Not verified | Named in the summary, key quotes and chapters |
| Word timestamps | Not verified | Yes |
| Streaming | Not verified | No |
| Languages | — | 99 |
| Platforms | Web | Web, API, MCP |
Alternatives to YouTube Live Auto Captions
Frequently asked about YouTube Live Auto Captions
Is YouTube Live Auto Captions free?
Yes. YouTube Live Auto Captions is free (free with YouTube Live).
Does YouTube Live Auto Captions work on Mac, Windows and Linux?
YouTube Live Auto Captions runs in the browser, so it works on any desktop OS with a modern browser, and on phones and tablets.
How do I get started with YouTube Live Auto Captions?
There is nothing to install — YouTube Live Auto Captions is used in the browser. Create an account on the vendor's site and upload or connect your audio.
What are the limitations of YouTube Live Auto Captions?
Quality is best-effort and not certified for any broadcaster regulatory framework.
Who is YouTube Live Auto Captions best for?
Creators and small broadcasters streaming to YouTube Live who want a baseline accessibility layer.
Is YouTube Live Auto Captions open source?
No. YouTube Live Auto Captions is a proprietary product. If you need source you can read and run yourself, the open-source tools in this directory are the place to look.
Is there a YouTube Live Auto Captions desktop app?
No — YouTube Live Auto Captions is browser-only. There is nothing to install and nothing runs on your machine.
What kind of tool is YouTube Live Auto Captions?
In this directory YouTube Live Auto Captions is filed under live caption, broadcast as a product.
What are the alternatives to YouTube Live Auto Captions?
There is a side-by-side page at /tools/youtube-live-auto-captions-alternatives comparing YouTube Live Auto Captions with the closest tools in the same category on price, platform and features.
Can I automate YouTube Live Auto Captions-style transcription without running it myself?
Yes. If what you want is transcripts rather than the tool itself, Whipscribe does the same job as a hosted API: submit a file or URL, poll a job id, pull the result as txt, json, srt, vtt or docx. $0.012 a minute — about $0.72 an audio hour — bought as credits that never expire. The automation recipes on this site show it wired to Drive folders, Zoom recordings, S3 buckets and no-code platforms.
How is Whipscribe different from YouTube Live Auto Captions?
YouTube Live Auto Captions is another vendor's product; Whipscribe is a per-minute transcription service. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and never used for training, and every job returns five formats plus an AI summary, quotes and topics. The first 20 minutes of any recording are transcribed free, and a pack from $6 (500 minutes) transcribes the rest and opens every export.
What does transcription cost if I use Whipscribe instead of YouTube Live Auto Captions?
$0.012 a minute — about $0.72 an audio hour — bought as credits that never expire. There is no subscription and no monthly minimum: a 3-hour recording is about $2.16, a thousand-hour archive is about $720 once. The first 20 minutes of any recording are transcribed free, and a pack from $6 (500 minutes) transcribes the rest and opens every export, so you can see what your recording holds before paying anything.
Where is the YouTube Live Auto Captions category heading?
Three things are moving across the whole speech-to-text market right now: summaries, action items and speaker insights generated on top of the transcript rather than sold separately; private, secured deployment where the audio never leaves a boundary you control; and agent access — transcription exposed as a tool that Claude, Cursor or a workflow runner can call directly. Whipscribe ships all three today: per-job insights, our own servers, and an MCP server.
Whipscribe is a hosted transcription service. If you want transcripts without running infrastructure, paste a URL or drop a file in the form below — you'll have a transcript in seconds.
Transcribe your recordings
Using YouTube Live Auto Captions today? Send your next recording here and compare the transcript. Transcribe any language, any recording · Transcription services from $0.29 an hour · Transcribe from any meeting or recording platform · How to transcribe, step by step
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Need the subtitle file itself?
Upload the recording or paste a link and download SRT or VTT: see the SRT file generator, SRT subtitles from a YouTube link and subtitles for any video.
Comparing tools before you pay?
If you would rather pay a service than run software yourself: see an honest roundup of the best transcription services, the cheapest way to transcribe an hour of audio and transcription services from $6.