The easiest way to download YouTube subtitles and captions?

Online youtube subtitle downloaders are highly effective because they can pull both manually uploaded captions (created by the author) and auto-generated captions (created by YouTube's AI).

And DownSub is one of the most stable and long-running tools. It supports not just YouTube but also Viki, VIU, and other video sites.

How to download youtube subtitles online free

Copy the URL: Go to the YouTube video and copy the link from the address bar.

Paste & Process: Go to the downloader site (e.g., DownSub.com) and paste the link into the search box. Click Download.

Choose the Language: The site will list every language available for that video.

Select Format: Click on the format you need (SRT is most common). The file will download immediately to your "Downloads" folder.

Safety Tip: These sites are free because they run on ads. Use an ad-blocker and never click on "System Update" or "Virus Detected" pop-ups that might appear on the sides of the page—these are fake ads. Only click the specific "Download SRT" or "Download TXT" buttons.

What if it doesn't work? If a tool says "No subtitles found," it usually means:

The video has no captions at all (neither auto-generated nor manual).

The video is private or age-restricted, which prevents third-party tools from accessing it.

The video creator has disabled the ability for third parties to crawl the transcript.