YouTube video summarizer
Paste a link to any YouTube video with captions and read the key points instead of watching.
No example to hand? — a NASA mission broadcast with captions.
Summaries you create here are kept for 7 days so you can save them by signing up.
Sumwise is a free YouTube video summarizer. It reads the video's own caption track — no download, no browser extension — and writes a structured summary: a title, then the video's key points as a list you can skim.
The preview above starts without an account: the title and the first key point arrive straight away. A free Sumwise account opens the rest and keeps every summary in your library.
How the YouTube video summarizer works
Paste the link
Copy the URL from the address bar or the Share button. watch, youtu.be, live and Shorts links all work.
Sumwise reads the captions
The video's caption track is fetched and read as text. Nothing is downloaded and nothing is installed.
Read the summary
The title and the first key point appear straight away. Sign up free to open the rest of the key points.
What you get
- The same structure every time: a title, then the key points — one idea per line.
- Any public video with captions — including Shorts, live replays and embeds.
- Inside Sumwise, summaries in 7 languages: English, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Arabic (full right-to-left), German and French. This page runs in English.
- A free account: 5 summaries a day, 30 a month, no credit card.
- Every summary you make is saved to your library, so you can come back to it.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need an account?
- Not to start. Paste a link and you will see the video's title and its first key point straight away. The rest of the key points needs a free Sumwise account, and signing up pulls the summary you just made into your library.
- Which videos work?
- Any public YouTube video that has captions. watch, youtu.be, live, embed and Shorts links are all accepted. If a video has no caption track there is nothing to read, and Sumwise says so rather than guessing at what the video contains.
- Does it download the video?
- No. Sumwise reads the caption track YouTube already publishes alongside the video, not the video or audio file. That is why a summary takes seconds rather than the running time of the video.
- Can it handle a long video?
- Yes. Very long transcripts are cut down for the free preview — when that happens Sumwise tells you and offers to summarize the first part instead of quietly shortening it. With an account, a full-length transcript is summarized whole.
- What does it cost?
- Nothing to try here, and nothing for an account: the free plan is 5 summaries a day and 30 a month, with no credit card. Pro raises those limits — the pricing page has the current numbers.
- What happens to the video I paste?
- Sumwise keeps the summary it produced so you can claim it after signing up, and an unclaimed preview is deleted after seven days. Captions fetched from YouTube are cached by video id so the same video is not fetched twice — public data, with nothing linking it to you.