Turn Any Facebook Reel Into Text

Open the Reel, tap Share and copy the link, or copy it from the browser's address bar. Paste it into Scrivi and click Transcribe. Scrivi finds the video behind the link, checks for a caption track, and returns the spoken content as clean text.

No download, no screen recording, no software to install. Scrivi works from the public link, so you never hand over a Facebook password. The same paste box also takes regular Facebook videos, Watch links, and fb.watch short links.

Whether a Reel transcript is free depends on one thing: does the Reel have captions? If Facebook generated captions or the creator added them, Scrivi reads them in seconds, and that is free on the free plan, up to 20 videos a day across all platforms, with no credit card.

Many Facebook Reels have no caption track. They were shot on a phone, set to music, and posted without subtitles. For those, Scrivi transcribes the audio itself with AI speech-to-text. That costs real processing time per minute, so it is part of the $2.99 Day Pass (24 hours of Pro) and the Pro plan, not the free tier.

Expect a good share of Reels to need the paid path. Scrivi tells you before anything is charged: a captionless Reel on the free plan shows a clear note instead of an empty page.

Scrivi reads the Reel's public page. If you can watch it in a private browser window without logging in, Scrivi can read it too.

You can often guess before you paste. If the Reel shows a CC option or Facebook offers to turn captions on while it plays, a caption track exists and Scrivi can read it for free. Reels from pages that publish regularly, news outlets, and creators who care about accessibility tend to have captions.

Text burned into the video itself is a different thing. Many creators add on-screen subtitles in their editing app; those are part of the picture, not a caption track, so Scrivi cannot read them as text. For those Reels, audio transcription on the Day Pass or Pro produces the text from what is spoken.

When in doubt, just paste the link. Scrivi checks for a caption track first and only offers the paid path when there is none, so trying costs nothing.

Facebook Reels are often cross-posted from Instagram, and the same trend tends to appear on TikTok and YouTube Shorts too. Scrivi takes links from all five platforms in the same box, so you can keep the scripts side by side in one history and compare how a message was adapted for each audience.

If a Reel was cross-posted, try the YouTube Short version first when one exists: Shorts usually carry auto-generated captions and come back free. On paid plans, batch transcription takes up to 10 links at once, mixed across platforms, and a research report can summarize what a whole set of Reels has in common.

A Reel is short, but the words in it are often what matters.

Once the Reel is text, one click generates an AI summary with a short overview, key points, and topics. The free plan includes 3 summaries a day. For a 30-second Reel the transcript is usually enough; summaries earn their keep on longer videos and when you compare many Reels.

Paid plans add export as PDF, .txt, or .md, Ask AI for follow-up questions, batch transcription of up to 10 links at once, collections to keep a campaign or competitor together, and research reports that combine 2 to 5 transcripts into one document. Transcripts stay in the spoken language; a Reel in Spanish comes back in Spanish.

Free: 20 caption transcriptions a day across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X, plus 3 AI summaries, no credit card. Day Pass: $2.99 for 24 hours of Pro, including AI audio transcription for Reels without captions, up to 3 hours per video. Pro: $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year with fair-use unlimited transcription, exports, Ask AI, batch, collections, and research reports. Lifetime: $79.99 once.

If you only need one captionless Reel today, the Day Pass is the cheapest route. If Reels are a regular part of your research, Pro keeps every platform in one dashboard.