YouTube Transcript Scraper - Extract Video Transcripts & Captions

YouTube Transcript Scraper is a powerful API tool that extracts accurate transcripts, subtitles, and captions from YouTube videos. 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 Transcript Scraper Do?

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

Key Features

• Complete Transcript Extraction: Extract full video transcripts
• All Video Types Supported: Regular videos, YouTube Shorts, live streams, premieres
• Universal URL Format Support: Works with youtube.com/watch?v=, youtu.be/, youtube.com/shorts/, youtube.com/live/, embed links, or just video IDs
• Multi-Language Caption Detection: Automatically detects and extracts captions in all available languages
• 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
videoUrl	string	Yes	YouTube video URL or video ID
language	string	No	Preferred language code (e.g., 'en', 'es'). Auto-detects if not specified

Input Example

{
  "videoUrl": "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en"
}

Supported URL formats:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID
• https://youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID
• https://youtube.com/live/VIDEO_ID
• https://youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID
• Just the VIDEO_ID itself

Output

{
  "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"
}

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
Dataset Item Created	apify-default-dataset-item	$0.00001 per item
Transcript Extracted	transcript-extracted	$0.01 per successful extraction

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

Cost Examples

• Extract 10 transcripts: ~$0.11
• Extract 100 transcripts: ~$1.10
• Extract 1,000 transcripts: ~$11.00

API Usage

REST API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/akash9078/youtube-transcript-extractor/runs" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -d '{"videoUrl": "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ"}'

Python

import requests

API_TOKEN = 'YOUR_API_TOKEN'
response = requests.post(
    'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/akash9078/youtube-transcript-extractor/runs',
    headers={'Authorization': f'Bearer {API_TOKEN}'},
    json={'videoUrl': 'https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ'}
)

Node.js

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

const run = await client.actor('akash9078/youtube-transcript-extractor').call({
  videoUrl: 'https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ'
});

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

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.

---

Keywords: YouTube transcript scraper, YouTube transcript extractor, YouTube captions API, YouTube subtitles extractor, video transcript API, YouTube data extraction, content repurposing, AI training data, RAG pipeline, sentiment analysis, SEO content, accessibility, ADA transcripts, batch transcript extraction, YouTube API alternative, structured JSON, multi-language captions, YouTube shorts transcript, video to text, automated transcription, Apify Actor, web scraping, data extraction API