YouTube Transcript Scraper

What is YouTube Transcript Scraper?

YouTube Transcript Scraper lets you get the transcript (captions) of any public YouTube video or Short as clean text and as timed segments, together with the video's title, channel, publish date and duration. Paste video links, a channel or a search phrase, click Start, and download the transcripts as JSON, CSV or Excel.

• 📝 Full text and timestamps: the whole transcript as one text, plus every line with its start time and duration
• 🌍 Any language: choose the language you want, with an English or original-language fallback
• 📺 Videos, Shorts, channels and search: transcribe a list of videos, a channel's latest uploads or the top results of a search
• 🔓 No login: no YouTube account, cookies or API key needed

What can YouTube Transcript Scraper do?

• Get the transcript of any public YouTube video or Short from its link or video ID
• Get transcripts of a channel's latest videos (up to 100 per run)
• Get transcripts of the top videos for a YouTube search
• Tell you whether each transcript was written by the creator or generated automatically
• Add the video's title, channel, publish date, duration and live-stream flag
• List videos without captions with the reason, so you know which ones have none
• Export to Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML or XML, or send the results to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier and more

What data can you extract from YouTube videos?

📝 Transcript text	⏱️ Timed segments	🌍 Transcript language
🤖 Automatic or creator captions	🎬 Video title	📺 Channel name, ID and link
📅 Publish date	⏳ Duration	🔴 Live stream flag

How to get a YouTube transcript

1. Create a free Apify account (no credit card needed).
2. Open YouTube Transcript Scraper.
3. Paste one or more YouTube video links, or add a channel link or a search phrase.
4. Choose the transcript language (for example en or es).
5. Click Start, and download the transcripts when the run finishes.

⬇️ Input

Setting	What it does
Video URLs	Links to YouTube videos or Shorts, or bare video IDs
Channel URLs	Transcribe a channel's latest videos, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd
Search query	Transcribe the top videos YouTube finds for this phrase
Max videos from channels and search	How many videos to take from channels and search in total (videos you list are always included)
Transcript language	The language you want, such as en, es or de
Include transcript / metadata / timed segments	Choose what each row contains

Example:

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "https://youtu.be/kJQP7kiw5Fk"
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "includeSegments": true
}

⬆️ Output

You get one row per video.

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "source": "videoUrl",
  "sourceRef": null,
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "channelName": "Rick Astley",
  "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "publishedAt": "2009-10-24T23:57:33-07:00",
  "durationSeconds": 213,
  "isLive": false,
  "captionStatus": "available",
  "transcriptText": "[♪♪♪] ♪ We're no strangers to love ♪ ♪ You know the rules and so do I ♪ ...",
  "transcriptLanguage": "en",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "transcriptCharCount": 2089,
  "segmentCount": 61,
  "transcriptSegments": [
    { "start": 1.36, "duration": 1.68, "text": "[♪♪♪]" },
    { "start": 18.64, "duration": 3.24, "text": "♪ We're no strangers to love ♪" }
  ],
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-27T12:32:30Z",
  "hasTranscript": true
}

captionStatus tells you what happened for each video:

Value	Meaning
available	You got the transcript
not_requested	You turned the transcript off, so the row has only the video details
unavailable	The video has no captions
disabled	The creator turned captions off
video_unavailable	The video is private, removed or does not exist
age_restricted	The video is age-restricted, which needs a signed-in viewer

Each run also saves a short report (OUTPUT in the key-value store) with the counts and any video that could not be read, with the reason. Those videos are not saved as rows and not charged. Rows without a transcript (hasTranscript is false) are free.

How can I use YouTube transcripts?

• AI and LLM pipelines: summarize videos, answer questions about them or build a searchable knowledge base
• Content research: find what top creators in your niche talk about and how they phrase it
• Repurposing: turn videos into blog posts, newsletters, social posts or show notes
• SEO: find the keywords and topics that rank on YouTube
• Subtitles and accessibility: get timed captions you can reuse
• Monitoring: transcribe a channel's new videos on a schedule

❓FAQ

How much does it cost to get YouTube transcripts?

You pay only for videos whose transcript you get. Videos without captions are still listed (hasTranscript is false) but free, and videos that could not be read are not charged. See the Pricing tab for the current price. Every Apify account gets $5 of free usage each month, so you can try it at no cost.

What if a video has no transcript in my language?

You get its English transcript if it has one, or else its transcript in the original language. transcriptLanguage tells you which language you got. YouTube does not let visitors who are not signed in use its automatic translation, so transcripts are not translated.

What is the difference between automatic and creator captions?

Creators can upload their own captions; otherwise YouTube generates them automatically from the speech. isAutoGenerated is true for YouTube's automatic captions. They are usually good but have no punctuation and can mishear names.

Can I get transcripts of YouTube Shorts?

Yes. Paste the Shorts link (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/...) like any other video.

Why is there no transcript for some videos?

Some videos have no captions at all (often music without lyrics or very new uploads), some creators turn captions off, and age-restricted videos need a signed-in viewer. captionStatus tells you which case it is.

Do I need a YouTube account or API key?

No. You don't need a YouTube account, cookies or a YouTube Data API key.

Is it legal to scrape YouTube transcripts?

This scraper only collects captions and video details that anyone can see on YouTube without signing in. Transcripts can be protected by copyright, so check how you may use them, and ask a lawyer if you are unsure. You can read more in Is web scraping legal?

YouTube Transcript Scraper is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by YouTube or Google.

Something isn't working. What should I do?

Open the Issues tab and tell us the video link and what you expected. We usually reply within a day.