🚀 I Built a Chrome Extension That Turns Any YouTube Video Into Text (Even Without Subtitles)

Hey Indie Hackers 👋

I wanted to share a small project: YouTube to Transcript, a Chrome extension I built to extract text from any YouTube video

It started as a personal tool. I was constantly watching long videos for work and learning, but never had time to go through them fully. Some didn’t even have subtitles. So I built a quick solution to:

• Extract the full transcript (even if the video has no captions)

• Translate transcripts into 89+ languages

• Save transcription history and access it on any device

• Create chapters with timestamps

I released on the Chrome Web Store, and it now has 25,000+ weekly active users - all organic. I’ve been refining it based on real feedback and bug reports from users, which has been an amazing learning process.

The first transcription is free, and then users can upgrade to a paid plan to support API costs and ongoing development. It’s just me behind this project — built entirely with no-code tools.

Now I’m thinking about the next steps:

How to get more revenue from 25k WAU?

I added paywall but it gives 100$ MMR only. I expected more, to be honest

I made a poll and asked users what they want and then I've added deferent additional functions, like:

Chat with the video (ask questions and get answers with timestamps) and Summarize the video using AI, but users don't use it at all. So I remove it to keep design clear.

I’d love to hear from other indie hackers how to monetize my product, and what methods worked best for you?

Thanks for reading — and if you often learn from YouTube videos, give it a try and tell me what you think: