YouTube Transcript Scraper

Extract transcripts and subtitles from YouTube videos with timestamps. Supports regular videos, shorts, and live streams.

💰 Pricing

This Actor uses the Pay Per Event pricing model:

Event	Price
Actor run	$0.00005
Per video transcript	$0.007

For example, extracting transcripts from 100 videos costs: $0.00005 + (100 × $0.007) = $0.70

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
start_urls	array	✅	—	List of YouTube video URLs to extract transcripts from
language	string	❌	"en"	Language code for subtitles (en, es, fr, de, pt, it, ja, ko, zh, ru, ar, hi)

Example Input

{
  "start_urls": [
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" },
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/abc123" }
  ],
  "language": "en"
}

📤 Output

Field	Type	Description
videoId	string	YouTube video ID
url	string	Full video URL
title	string	Video title
transcript	array	Array of transcript segments with timestamps
transcript[].start	string	Start time (MM:SS format)
transcript[].startSeconds	number	Start time in seconds
transcript[].text	string	Transcript text for this segment
fullText	string	Complete transcript as single text block
segmentsCount	number	Total number of transcript segments
error	string	Error message if extraction failed

Example Output

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
  "transcript": [
    { "start": "00:00", "startSeconds": 0, "text": "We're no strangers to love" },
    { "start": "00:03", "startSeconds": 3.5, "text": "You know the rules and so do I" }
  ],
  "fullText": "We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I",
  "segmentsCount": 2
}

🔧 How It Works

1. Uses yt-dlp to download YouTube subtitles (most reliable method)
2. Supports both manual and auto-generated subtitles
3. Parses JSON3 subtitle format for accurate timestamps
4. Falls back to auto-generated subtitles when manual ones aren't available

🌐 Supported Languages

English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Hindi

🔗 Integration

• Zapier: Use the "Run Actor" action with dataset polling
• Make.com: Use the HTTP module to call the Actor API
• n8n: Use the Apify node or HTTP Request node
• OpenAI MCP: Connect via the Apify MCP server

⚠️ Notes

• Videos must have subtitles or auto-generated captions enabled
• Some videos may not have subtitles available in the requested language
• Rate limiting may apply for large batches of videos