YouTube Full Channel Transcripts Extractor

YouTube Full Channel Transcripts Extractor is a powerful API tool that extracts accurate transcripts, subtitles, and captions from all YouTube videos in a channel. Perfect for content creators, researchers, marketers, and developers who need to convert video content into searchable, structured text data for AI training, SEO, content repurposing, and accessibility compliance.

What Does YouTube Full Channel Transcripts Extractor Do?

This YouTube transcript extractor API automatically retrieves full transcripts from all videos in a YouTube channel that have captions (manual or auto-generated). No API keys, no complex setup—just input a YouTube channel URL and get structured JSON transcript data in seconds.

Key Features

• Complete Channel Extraction: Extract full video transcripts from entire YouTube channels
• All Video Types Supported: Regular videos, YouTube Shorts, live streams, premieres
• Multiple Channel URL Formats: Works with youtube.com/channel/, youtube.com/@username, youtube.com/c/customname, youtube.com/user/
• Multi-Language Caption Detection: Automatically detects and extracts captions in all available languages
• Batch Processing: Extract transcripts from all videos in a YouTube channel with configurable limits
• Fast & Reliable: Cloud-based extraction with automatic retry logic and proxy protection
• Structured JSON Output: Clean transcript data ready for AI/ML pipelines, databases, or content workflows
• No YouTube API Quota Limits: Unlike the official YouTube Data API, there are no daily quota restrictions

Use Cases

Content Creators & Marketers

• Content Repurposing: Transform video content into blog posts, social media captions, newsletters
• SEO Optimization: Extract keywords and trending topics from transcripts
• Competitor Analysis: Study competitor video strategies

Researchers & Data Scientists

• AI/ML Training Data: Build text datasets for training language models
• Academic Research: Analyze video content for research papers
• Sentiment Analysis: Process transcript text for audience sentiment

Businesses & Agencies

• Accessibility Compliance: Generate ADA and WCAG compliant transcripts
• Internal Training: Convert training videos to searchable documentation
• Lead Generation: Identify prospects discussing your industry

Developers

• RAG Pipelines: Feed transcript data into vector databases for AI-powered search
• API Integration: RESTful API with JSON output
• Batch Processing: Process hundreds or thousands of videos programmatically

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
url	string	Yes	YouTube channel URL
language	string	No	Preferred language code (e.g., 'en', 'es'). Auto-detects if not specified
maxVideos	integer	No	Maximum number of videos to process from a channel (default: 5, use 0 for all videos)

Input Example

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/@google",
  "maxVideos": 50,
  "language": "en"
}

Supported Channel URL formats:

• https://www.youtube.com/channel/CHANNEL_ID
• https://www.youtube.com/@username
• https://www.youtube.com/c/customname
• https://www.youtube.com/user/username

Output

Multiple results are returned (one for each video processed):

[
  {
    "success": true,
    "video_id": "WQNgQVRG9_U",
    "video_url": "https://youtu.be/WQNgQVRG9_U",
    "transcript": "Is this how you get your web data? Copy-pasting everything into a table...",
    "language": "en",
    "extraction_time": 3.08,
    "timestamp": "2026-02-17T09:00:12.059613+00:00"
  },
  {
    "success": true,
    "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "video_url": "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "transcript": "We're no strangers to love. You know the rules and so do I...",
    "language": "en",
    "extraction_time": 2.85,
    "timestamp": "2026-02-17T09:00:15.123456+00:00"
  }
]

Output Fields

Field	Type	Description
success	boolean	Whether transcript extraction was successful
video_id	string	YouTube video ID
video_url	string	Original YouTube video URL
transcript	string	Full transcript text content
error	string	Error message if extraction failed
language	string	Language code of the extracted transcript
extraction_time	number	Time taken to extract in seconds
timestamp	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of extraction

Pricing

This Actor uses transparent pay-per-event pricing:

Event	Event Name	Price
Actor Start	apify-actor-start	$0.00005 per run
Transcript Extracted	transcript-extracted	$0.01 per successful extraction

Note: $10 per 1000 videos - bulk discounts available on request.

Free Tier Available: Test with free credits when you sign up for Apify.

Cost Examples

• Extract 10 video transcripts from a channel: ~$0.10
• Extract 100 video transcripts from a channel: ~$1.00
• Extract all videos from a channel (e.g., 50 videos): ~$0.50

API Usage

REST API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/pintostudio~youtube-full-channel-transcripts-extractor/runs" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -d '{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/@google", "maxVideos": 50}'

Python

import requests

API_TOKEN = 'YOUR_API_TOKEN'
response = requests.post(
    'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/pintostudio~youtube-full-channel-transcripts-extractor/runs',
    headers={'Authorization': f'Bearer {API_TOKEN}'},
    json={'url': 'https://www.youtube.com/@google', 'maxVideos': 50}
)

Node.js

const { ApifyClient } = require('apify-client');
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('pintostudio/youtube-full-channel-transcripts-extractor').call({
  url: 'https://www.youtube.com/@google',
  maxVideos: 50
});

Limitations

• Videos must have captions (manual or auto-generated)
• Currently live streams (ongoing broadcasts) are not supported
• Private or unlisted videos cannot be accessed
• Age-restricted videos may require authentication
• Channel processing is limited to public channels only
• Very large channels may take significant time to process completely

Integrations

• AI/ML: LangChain, LlamaIndex, vector databases
• Automation: Zapier, Make, n8n
• Data: Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion

Support

For issues or questions, use the Issues tab on the Actor page or join the Apify Discord community.

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