ReadTube's core idea is to transform subscription content from video platforms such as YouTube and Bilibili into a reading experience similar to a newsletter inbox, helping users reclaim focus in an era designed to capture attention.
In terms of use, ReadTube is aimed at readers subscribed to creators of interviews, lectures, tech talks, and long-form content, especially users who are in the habit of saving things for "watch later" but rarely going back to them. It turns each channel you follow into a sortable inbox, letting you handle videos like email: star, read later, archive, mark as unread.
Main capabilities include: generating a one-line title and a summary for each video for quick browsing; when you need to go deeper, generating a full long-form rewrite, so a 20-minute video can become about 5 minutes of reading content. It supports semantic search across all followed channels, turning subscription content into a personal archive of ideas. You can add timestamped notes alongside articles, letting your thoughts exist together with the source. It also supports generating summaries and articles in the language you think in, with translation performed by the same model rather than a separate machine translation process.
In terms of how to use it, ReadTube captures public subtitles from YouTube videos, channels, and playlists, as well as Bilibili videos and channels. Paste any supported URL, and the system will handle fetching subtitles, generating titles, and converting long videos into readable articles. No YouTube or Bilibili account is required; you only need to add the channels you want to follow.
Unsupported video types include: short videos (such as YouTube Shorts and other clips under one minute), videos without subtitles (such as music videos and silent footage), and private or age-restricted videos.
Applicable scenarios are mainly researchers and lifelong learners who want to read rather than watch, and who want to build a deep personal knowledge archive. If you mainly use YouTube for entertainment, vlogs, music, or visual content, ReadTube may not be suitable, because it intentionally removes short videos, autoplay, and recommendation feeds.
Regarding billing and licensing, ReadTube uses the ELv2 source-available license, can be self-hosted with your own API keys, and has no limits on videos, channels, or playlists. The cloud version is free during the testing period, and quotas for later paid tiers will begin to be enforced. Paid tiers include the Curator and Researcher tiers, offering monthly video transcription counts, the number of channels and playlists tracked, the number of individual videos saved, Markdown export, and other features. Notes and highlighting features are marked as coming soon.
