YouTube Transcript API: Subtitles, SRT, Text, Markdown
Pricing
from $0.68 / 1,000 video transcribeds
Get YouTube transcripts from video, Shorts, channel or playlist URLs: timestamped segments, plain text, Markdown, SRT, metadata. No API key, no login. MCP-ready for Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT and AI agents. YouTube Data API alternative. Pay per result, errors are free: $0.80 per 1,000 videos.
You can access the YouTube Transcript API: Subtitles, SRT, Text, Markdown programmatically from your own applications by using the Apify API. You can also choose the language preference from below. To use the Apify API, you’ll need an Apify account and your API token, found in API & Integrations in Apify Console.
1from apify_client import ApifyClient2
3# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token4# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.5client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")6
7# Prepare the Actor input8run_input = {9 "urls": [10 "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",11 "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ",12 ],13 "language": "en",14 "maxVideosPerChannelOrPlaylist": 10,15 "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": True },16}17
18# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish19run = client.actor("actose/youtube-transcripts").call(run_input=run_input)20
21# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)22print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")23for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():24 print(item)25
26# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-startThe Apify API client for Python is the official library that allows you to use YouTube Transcript API: Subtitles, SRT, Text, Markdown API in Python, providing convenience functions and automatic retries on errors.
Install the apify-client
$pip install apify-clientOther API clients include: