Free AI YouTube Video Summarizer

Summarize any YouTube video in seconds

Scholarly is a free YouTube video summarizer for students and professionals: paste a video URL and get a clear, structured summary built straight from the transcript — key points, main ideas, and timestamps, ready to study or share.

Free to start · No credit card required

Used by 170,000+ students, researchers & professionals

Enter YouTube Video URL

Paste the URL of the YouTube video you want to summarize. You will be redirected to register to access the full summary.

Video transcripts are processed securely by Scholarly's AI.

How it works

From video link to summary in three steps

No editing, no scrubbing the timeline. Paste, review, and save.

01

Step 1: Paste URL

Provide a YouTube video URL, and let our AI analyze the transcript to create a summary.

02

Step 2: Review

Get a structured summary with key points, main ideas, and important details from the video.

03

Step 3: Save & Share

Save summaries to your Scholarly account, export as PDF, or share with classmates.

Inside the summary

What do you get in a YouTube video summary?

Updated June 2026

Every summary is built from the video's transcript and structured like good lecture notes — not one undifferentiated wall of text.

TL;DR overview

Two or three sentences with the video's core argument, so you know instantly whether it covers what you need.

Key points with timestamps

The main ideas in the order the video makes them, with timestamps where the captions provide them — jump straight back to the moment that matters.

Terms and definitions

Technical vocabulary the video introduces, captured with the explanation actually given — not a generic dictionary definition.

What to review next

The parts worth a second pass before an exam, so an hour-long lecture turns into a focused revision plan.

What you get

More than a wall of text

Every summary is built to help you actually learn the material, not just skim it.

Transcript-grounded

Summaries are pulled straight from the video's own words, so nothing is invented or hallucinated.

Key points & takeaways

The main ideas surface first, with supporting detail underneath — structured the way you'd take notes.

70+ languages

Summarize a lecture in one language and read it in another. Great for international courses.

Save to your workspace

Keep every summary in your Scholarly library, organized into folders alongside your other sources.

Turn it into flashcards

One click turns the summary into a deck of flashcards so the video sticks in long-term memory.

Export & share

Download as PDF or share a link with classmates so the whole study group is on the same page.

Why it helps

Stop rewatching hour-long videos

A two-hour lecture rarely needs two hours of your attention. Most of the value lives in a handful of ideas — but finding them means scrubbing back and forth, pausing to take notes, and losing the thread.

A transcript-grounded summary changes that. You see the structure of the whole video at a glance, decide what's worth a deeper look, and jump straight to the parts that matter for your exam or assignment.

Because the summary is built from the video's actual transcript, it stays faithful to what was said. It's a study aid that respects the source — not a generic AI guess about what a video on the topic might contain.

And once the summary lives in your Scholarly workspace, it becomes a launchpad: ask follow-up questions, generate practice questions, or build flashcards — all grounded in that same video.

Beyond one video

Can I study a whole playlist — or mix videos with readings?

Yes. Each video you summarize becomes a source in your Scholarly workspace, and it doesn't have to stay alone:

  • Summarize every lecture in a series and keep them together in one folder per course.

  • Add the course readings next to them — webpages, PDFs, and slides live in the same workspace.

  • Ask one question across all of it and get a cited answer that points to the exact video or page it came from.

Summarize the readings with the website summarizer, turn videos into clean notes with YouTube to Notes, or go straight from an article to a study deck with Website to Flashcards.

How it compares

Summary tool vs. real study workspace

Plenty of tools spit out a summary. Scholarly turns the video into something you can study from.

Generic summary tools

Good for a quick gist. Paste a link, get a paragraph. Fine when you just want to know roughly what a video is about.

The summary lives nowhere — copy it out before you close the tab or it's gone.

No way to turn the summary into practice, flashcards, or a grounded chat.

Quality varies; many don't read the real transcript at all.

Watching & note-taking

Thorough, but slow. Taking your own notes is great for retention — when you actually have the time.

An hour of video can mean an hour of pausing, rewinding, and typing.

Notes end up scattered across docs with no link back to the moments they came from.

Hard to revise quickly the night before an exam.

Best for students & professionals
Scholarly

Summarize, then study. The summary is the start, not the end of the workflow.

Every summary saves to your library, organized into folders with your other sources.

Turn the video into flashcards, a quiz, or a grounded AI chat in one click.

Built from the real transcript and available in 70+ languages.

The study loop

One video, a full study session

A summary is just the first step. From the same video you can spin up flashcards, build a practice quiz, or open a grounded AI chat that answers questions using the video itself.

Keep going with related tools

Built for video study — pick the output that fits how you revise.

YouTube to Flashcards

Turn any video into a deck of study flashcards.

YouTube to Notes

Convert any video into clean, structured notes.

AI Lecture Notes

Same idea, built for live lectures and AI Meeting Notes.

AI Study Guide Generator

Build a full study guide from your video notes.

AI Cheat Sheet Maker

Distill the video down to a one-page reference.

YouTube to Video Lecture

Re-teach the video as a narrated study lecture.

Privacy

What does Scholarly read when you paste a video?

Only the public transcript and details of the exact video you paste. There is no browser extension, no connection to your YouTube account, and no record of what you watch — you choose every video explicitly, and saved summaries stay in your private library where you can delete them anytime.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How does the YouTube summarizer work?

Paste a YouTube URL and Scholarly reads the video's transcript, then generates a structured summary — a short overview, the key points in order, and the terms the video introduces, with timestamps where captions provide them.

Can I summarize any YouTube video?

Yes, our tool works with most public YouTube videos. Private or restricted videos may not be accessible for summarization.

Is the YouTube summarizer free?

Yes. The Free plan includes 1 lifetime AI creation. Premium includes 10 AI creations each week plus unlimited uploads, quizzes, and grounded AI chat.

Does it read the actual video transcript?

Yes. Summaries are generated from the video's own transcript, so they stay faithful to what was actually said rather than guessing from the title or thumbnail.

Can I turn a summary into flashcards or a quiz?

Yes. Once a summary is in your Scholarly workspace you can convert it into flashcards, generate a practice quiz, or open a grounded AI chat — all built from the same video.

Can I get a YouTube summary with timestamps?

Yes. Because summaries are built from the timed transcript, key points keep timestamps where captions provide them — so you can jump from a bullet in the summary straight back to that moment in the video.

Does it work on long lectures — an hour or more?

Yes, long lectures are the main use case. The longer the video, the more time a transcript-grounded summary saves: a 90-minute lecture compresses into structured notes you can review in a few minutes, then selectively rewatch.

What if a video has no transcript or captions?

Most YouTube videos have automatic captions, which is enough. If a video genuinely has none, it can't be summarized from the link — but you can record or upload the audio to Scholarly instead, and it will transcribe and summarize it like AI Meeting Notes.

Can I summarize a YouTube video in another language?

Yes. You can summarize a video in one language and read the summary in another — Scholarly supports 70+ languages, which helps with courses taught in a second language.

Can I combine YouTube videos with webpages and PDFs?

Yes. Videos, webpages, PDFs, and AI Meeting Notes all become sources in the same workspace. Group them into a folder per course and ask questions across all of them — answers come back with citations to the exact source.

How do I summarize a YouTube video?

Copy the video's URL from YouTube, paste it into the summarizer above, and Scholarly reads the transcript and returns a structured summary in seconds — a short overview, the key points in order, and timestamps where captions provide them. Create a free account to save it and turn it into flashcards or a quiz.

What's the best free YouTube video summarizer for students?

For studying, the best YouTube video summarizer is one that grounds the summary in the real transcript and lets you act on it. Scholarly does both: it's free to start, summarizes in 70+ languages with timestamps, and keeps each video as a source you can chat with, quiz yourself on, or convert to flashcards — not a throwaway paragraph you copy and lose.

Keep exploring

More Scholarly study tools

YouTube Transcript Generator

Get the raw transcript behind the summary.

YouTube to Notes

Convert any video into structured notes.

Website Summarizer

The same workflow for webpages and articles.

PDF Summarizer

Summarize a research paper or textbook PDF.

AI Study Guide Generator

Build a study guide from your video notes.

YouTube to Flashcards

Turn any video into flashcards.

AI Podcast Generator

Turn your videos and notes into a listenable podcast.

Pricing

Sign up to Scholarly to Summarize Videos

Start free, then go Premium for 10 AI creations each week, unlimited uploads, quizzes, and grounded AI chat across your videos.

Free

See what it does with one of your own sources.

$0

/month

Free forever

No card required.

  • 3 lifetime AI Chat messages

  • 1 free AI creation total

  • 2-minute podcasts and video lectures

  • 1 free file upload total (8MB)

  • 5 lifetime quiz questions

  • 1 completed practice exam total

  • 15 lifetime voice minutes

  • 32-page PDF to flashcards

  • 500 lifetime autocomplete words

Use it to generate flashcards, improve a deck, or create a podcast, video lecture, slides, infographic, mind map, study guide, worksheet, spreadsheet, story book, timeline, SOP, flowchart, lesson plan, or outline — or run Deep Research or turn a recording into AI Meeting Notes.

Premium

Most Popular

Steady weekly output from the material you already have.

$12

/month

Billed yearly at $144 · save $216

  • Everything in Free, plus:

  • 10 AI creations per week

  • Unlimited AI chat & autocomplete

  • Podcasts up to 60 minutes, videos up to 45 minutes

  • Unlimited file uploads (up to 300MB)

  • Unlimited study sessions

  • Unlimited exams & quizzes

  • 1000-page PDF to flashcards

  • Export to Anki

  • Priority support

Laureate

For work where being right matters more than the price.

$99

/month

billed monthly · cancel anytime

For frontier models & 8x more AI Creations

Our most advanced and most expensive tier.

  • Everything in Premium, plus:

  • 80 weighted AI creation credits every week

  • 80 AI creations per week

  • Podcasts up to 60 minutes, videos up to 45 minutes

  • Unlimited uploads up to 1 GB, plus 3,000-page PDFs

  • 12 hours of voice mode per day

  • Priority support and early access to new Frontier models

Pricing shown in USD. Local currency may be available for Premium in app.

Compare plans

AI chat

Premium and Laureate include unlimited AI chat. GPT 5.6 Sol and Claude Opus 5 are reserved for credit-metered AI creations.

Free
3 total
Premium
Unlimited
Laureate
Unlimited

AI creations

AI creations share one credit balance across every creation tool. Standard models use 1 credit; Frontier models Sol and Opus use 3.

Free
1 total
Premium
10/week
Laureate
80/week

Podcast length

Free episodes are fixed at 2 minutes. Paid plans can set a target length up to 60 minutes.

Free
2 minutes
Premium
Up to 60 minutes
Laureate
Up to 60 minutes

Video lecture length

Free lectures with a length control are fixed at 2 minutes. Paid plans can set a target up to 45 minutes. Short uses its own short video format.

Free
2 minutes
Premium
Up to 45 minutes
Laureate
Up to 45 minutes

File uploads

Free
1 total (8MB)
Premium
Unlimited (300MB)
Laureate
Unlimited (1 GB each)

PDF to flashcards

Free
32 pages
Premium
1000 pages
Laureate
3000 pages

Practice questions

Free
5 total
Premium
Unlimited
Laureate
Unlimited

Practice exams

Free
1 total
Premium
Unlimited
Laureate
Unlimited

Voice mode

Free
15 min total
Premium
2 hr/day
Laureate
12 hr/day

Autocomplete

Free
500 words total
Premium
Unlimited
Laureate
Unlimited

Export to Anki

Free
—
Premium
Included
Laureate
Included

Support

Free
Standard
Premium
Priority
Laureate
Priority

What customers say

Scholarly has enhanced the quality of notes and questions I administer to my tutees. Insightful, to the point.

TD Georgas

TD Georgas

Tutor

I have very good experience with Scholarly it summarize me scientific text in hovel academic level with citation. I use this for any therapeutic area . It is great and useful tool.

Diana

Diana

Scholarly user

Scholarly has been a valuable tool for my studies. The AI-generated flashcards and intuitive features make organizing and retaining information much easier.

Briana

Briana

Scholarly user

This app is great for studying for big test. Drop your PDF's in the system and it'll do the trick. You can organize it specifically for your needs.

Kelvin

Kelvin

Scholarly user

Your questions, answered

Is Scholarly free to use?

Yes! The free plan includes core study tools with lifetime allowances: 3 AI Chat messages, 500 autocomplete words, 5 quiz questions, 15 voice minutes, 1 practice exam, one free AI creation total, and 1 file upload. These allowances do not reset. Upgrade to Premium for 10 AI creations per week and unlimited uploads.

What uses my free AI creations?

Generating flashcards, improving a flashcard deck, making a podcast, creating a video lecture or infographic, building slides, a spreadsheet, or a story book, making a mind map, study guide, or worksheet, having an AI Agent create a timeline, SOP, flowchart, lesson plan, or outline, running Deep Research, or processing a recording uses your free AI creation. It is a lifetime free credit and does not reset. AI Chat, autocomplete, quiz practice, voice, exams, and file uploads have separate lifetime allowances.

Can I cancel anytime?

Absolutely. There are no contracts or commitments. You can cancel your subscription at any time from your account settings, and you'll keep access until the end of your billing period.

What payment methods do you accept?

We accept all major credit and debit cards through Stripe. Pricing is displayed in USD by default, but local currency is available in the app.

Can I use Scholarly with a class or school?

Yes. For a school or organization-wide rollout, contact us at hello@scholarly.so and we'll help you find the right setup.

What happens when I hit a free plan limit?

You'll see a prompt to upgrade. Your existing work is never lost — limits only apply to new actions. Free-plan allowances are lifetime credits and do not reset. Premium includes 10 AI creations per week, podcasts up to 60 minutes, video lectures up to 45 minutes, unlimited uploads, chat, autocomplete, quizzes, and exams, plus more daily voice time.