The best free YouTube summarizer in 2026

If you want AI key points, takeaways and a searchable transcript from any YouTube video — without paying, signing up, or pasting transcripts into ChatGPT — here's what matters and where Wisdom fits.

What to look for in a free summarizer

• Actually free to start — no card, no forced trial.
• No API key or extra account — it should just work.
• Structured output — summary, main points, takeaways, quotes.
• Transcript + Q&A — search the words, ask the video questions.
• Export — Markdown / Obsidian / Notion so notes leave the tool.

Why Wisdom is a strong pick

Wisdom is free (10 summaries/month with no signup, 50/month after a free Google sign-in), needs no API key, and gives you the summary, a timestamped searchable transcript, chat-with-the-video, and comment-sentiment analysis — in the YouTube sidebar or via the paste-a-URL web app. Notes export to Markdown, Obsidian, Notion and JSON.

Other good tools exist (Eightify, Glasp, NoteGPT) — see the head-to-head pages: vs Eightify, vs Glasp, vs NoteGPT.