Instagram Reels Transcript - Speech to Text for Reels & TikTok

What does Instagram Reels Transcript do?

Instagram Reels Transcript turns Instagram Reels, TikTok videos, Facebook ad videos and any video or audio file into text. It runs OpenAI's Whisper speech-to-text model and returns a clean transcript with punctuation, the detected language, duration and optional timestamps for every video.

Use it as an Instagram transcript API: feed it the dataset of any Instagram or TikTok scraper, or paste direct media links, and get a table of transcripts you can search, analyze or feed into ChatGPT and Claude.

Typical uses: repurposing reels into posts and blogs, studying competitors' hooks and scripts, content research at scale, subtitles, and building AI datasets from short-form video.

Why use this Instagram transcript tool?

• 🎧 Downloads audio only when it can. Instagram serves the soundtrack separately, so we fetch a ~300 KB audio file instead of a full video. Fast and cheap.
• 🌍 99 languages, auto-detected per video. English, Spanish, German, Russian, Portuguese and more, with punctuation. Force a language with one field if you need to.
• 🎵 Music-only clips are free. No speech, no charge. Expired links, photos and failed downloads are free too.
• 🔁 No duplicates. The same reel listed twice is transcribed and billed once.
• ⏱️ Timestamps on demand. Segments with start and end seconds for subtitles and clipping.
• 🔗 Works with any scraper. Instagram Scraper, Instagram Reel Scraper, TikTok scrapers, Facebook Ads Library scrapers or your own dataset: we pick up audioUrl, videoUrl, mediaUrls or the ad's snapshot.videos automatically and keep shortCode, ownerUsername and caption.
• 📢 Facebook ad scripts. The same creative running in many ads is transcribed and billed once; the copies get the text for free.
• 🛟 No charge for garbage. If the language is unclear or the audio can't be transcribed reliably, the row is marked lowConfidence and is free. Set Language and retry.

How much does it cost to transcribe Instagram Reels?

You pay per transcript: one price covers a video up to 3 minutes, and longer videos add a small fee per extra minute. Music-only videos, failed links and duplicates cost nothing. Set Max media and the run's maximum cost to cap spending.

How to transcribe Instagram Reels

1. Run an Instagram scraper (for example Instagram Reel Scraper) for the profiles, hashtags or reels you need.
2. Copy the dataset ID of that run (Storage tab) and paste it into Dataset ID.
3. Optionally set the Language or turn on Timestamps.
4. Click Start and download the transcripts as JSON, CSV or Excel, or get them via the Apify API.

Tip: Instagram media links expire after 1-3 days, so transcribe a fresh scraper run. You can also chain both Actors with an integration so transcripts arrive automatically after every scrape.

Have direct links instead? Paste .mp4, .m4a, .mp3, .wav or .ogg URLs into Direct video or audio URLs.

Input example

{
  "datasetId": "qxDjaSDiNnwncv9c3",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "language": "",
  "includeTimestamps": false
}

Output example

{
  "mediaUrl": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/t2/f2/m78/....mp4",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/p/DeRiH7QITmd/",
  "shortCode": "DeRiH7QITmd",
  "ownerUsername": "example_creator",
  "caption": "Sharding vs replication #backend",
  "durationSec": 97.97,
  "transcript": "How do you scale a database that can't handle the load? Replicate it or shard it? ...",
  "hasSpeech": true,
  "language": "en",
  "languageProbability": 0.99,
  "wordCount": 276,
  "model": "small",
  "transcribedAt": "2026-10-12T18:40:12Z"
}

Fields you get

Field	Description
transcript	Full text with punctuation (empty when there is no speech)
hasSpeech	false for music-only or silent clips (not charged)
language, languageProbability	Detected language code and confidence
durationSec, wordCount	Audio length and number of words
segments	[{start, end, text}] when Timestamps is on
sourceUrl, shortCode, ownerUsername, caption, timestamp	Copied from the scraper item
mediaUrl, error	File that was transcribed and, if it failed, why
lowConfidence, duplicateOf	Unreliable audio (free) / same video already transcribed in this run (free)
adArchiveId	Facebook Ad Library ID for ad datasets

FAQ

Can I paste a reel link like instagram.com/reel/...? Not directly. A reel page is not a media file. Scrape the reels first with any Instagram scraper and pass its dataset ID. This keeps the transcription step simple, cheap and independent of Instagram's page changes.

Which model is used? Whisper small by default (good accuracy, punctuation). base is faster for rough drafts.

Does it work for Facebook ads? Yes. Run a Facebook Ads Library scraper and pass its dataset ID: every ad with a video gets its script transcribed.

Does it work for TikTok and YouTube Shorts? Yes, for any scraper that saves a downloadable video or audio link, or for direct file URLs.

Is it legal? The Actor transcribes media files you provide. It does not log in anywhere. Make sure you have the right to process the content you transcribe.

Something broke? Open an issue on the Issues tab. We usually reply within a day.