YouTube Captions by the Numbers: What 30,000 Transcripts Show (2026)

GetYouTubeTranscript stores the transcript of every video that goes through it. Between 1 May 2025 and 1 November 2026 that came to 29,974 videos from 6,605 channels. For each one we kept the caption type (auto-generated or written by the creator), the caption language, the length and the word count, and we counted.

Pace figures use the 23,009 videos longer than one minute, from 4,629 channels, as words divided by minutes. Shorts are the 3,113 videos of one minute or less. The median video over a minute is about 19 minutes long.

24,478 of the videos have a recorded caption type. Of those, 23,238 (94.9%) have auto-generated captions and 1,240 (5.1%) have captions the creator wrote or uploaded.

That matters if you build on transcripts. Auto-generated captions have no punctuation guarantees and can misspell names and product terms, so a search over transcripts or a summary built on them should expect that. A video with no captions at all returns nothing to read, and the API reports that as an error instead of guessing.

Median speaking pace in captions, videos longer than one minute. English runs at 163 words per minute; auto-generated English captions come in at 162 and creator-written ones at 153.

Languages with fewer than 250 videos are left out. Japanese is left out because its words are not separated by spaces, so a word count is not comparable.

A Short of one minute or less has a median of 91 English words, spoken at 153 words per minute, a little slower than long videos. That is about one paragraph. To get the text of one, paste its link into the YouTube Shorts transcript tool.

Each line below stands on its own, with the sample named, so you can quote it as written.

• In 24,478 YouTube videos fetched through GetYouTubeTranscript between May 2025 and November 2026, 94.9% had auto-generated captions and 5.1% had creator-written captions.
• The median English YouTube video longer than one minute is spoken at 163 words per minute (GetYouTubeTranscript, 19,113 videos).
• The median English YouTube Short holds 91 words (GetYouTubeTranscript, Shorts of one minute or less).

This page keeps the same URL when the numbers are updated, so a link to it stays valid.

• The sample is the videos people fetched through our service, not a random draw from all of YouTube. Channels people ask for transcripts of lean toward interviews, tutorials and talks.
• Caption type is recorded for 24,478 of 29,974 videos; older rows from before we recorded it are left out of the auto versus creator-written split.
• Words per minute is the caption word count divided by the video length, so silence and music lower it.
• No data about viewers, accounts or who requested a video is used.