YouTube Transcript Scraper: Get Video Transcripts with Timestamps

YouTube Transcript Scraper turns any YouTube video into clean, searchable text. Give it a link or a video ID and it returns the full transcript, a version with timestamps on every line, and the details you usually have to click around for: title, channel, publish date, length, views, likes, tags and thumbnail.

It reads every common link format, including Shorts, youtu.be links, embeds, live links and bare 11-character IDs. If a video has no captions, you still get a result that says so instead of a crashed run.

Use cases

• Repurpose videos into written content: turn a talk, podcast or tutorial into a blog post, newsletter or social thread without typing it out
• Feed AI tools and LLM pipelines: send transcripts to summarizers, chatbots, RAG indexes or training sets
• Keyword and SEO research: see the exact words top channels in your niche use on camera
• Subtitles, translation and accessibility: start from timestamped text instead of a blank file
• Content analysis: extract and analyze what's said in product demos, tutorials, or educational videos

What data does this YouTube transcript extractor return?

The video result includes:

• The transcript three ways: one plain text block, one text block with [mm:ss] timestamps, and an optional list of lines with start and end times in seconds
• Video details: title, description, category, tags, publish date, duration in seconds and as mm:ss, view count, like count, thumbnail
• Channel details: channel name, channel ID and channel URL
• Language info: the caption track used, its language code, and every caption language the video offers
• Handy counts: word count and number of transcript lines
• An error field: null when things worked, a short reason when they did not

Input

Field	Type	Default	What it does
video	string	required	YouTube video URL or ID
includeSegments	boolean	true	Add the list of timed transcript lines
includeTimestampedText	boolean	true	Add the transcript as text with [mm:ss] before each line
requestTimeoutSecs	integer	60	Seconds to wait for the request
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy (on)	Proxy type and location to use for requests

Link formats it understands

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiS5qH7UMX4
https://youtu.be/aiS5qH7UMX4
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aqz-KE-bpKQ
https://www.youtube.com/embed/aiS5qH7UMX4
https://www.youtube.com/live/aiS5qH7UMX4
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aiS5qH7UMX4
aiS5qH7UMX4

Example inputs

Basic: One video, everything included

{
    "video": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiS5qH7UMX4"
}

Plain text only (smaller output)

Good for AI tools and spreadsheets.

{
    "video": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiS5qH7UMX4",
    "includeSegments": false,
    "includeTimestampedText": false
}

Using a bare video ID

{
    "video": "aiS5qH7UMX4"
}

Output

A successful video (trimmed)

{
    "videoId": "aiS5qH7UMX4",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiS5qH7UMX4",
    "input": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiS5qH7UMX4",
    "title": "Sell Anywhere (SELL TO ANY CUSTOMER in 2018)",
    "channelName": "Alex Hormozi",
    "channelId": "UCUyDOdBWhC1MCxEjC46d-zw",
    "channelUrl": "http://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi",
    "description": "Download your free scaling roadmap here...",
    "category": "People & Blogs",
    "keywords": ["sell anywhere", "sales skills", "gym sales"],
    "publishedAt": "2018-07-20T12:48:49-07:00",
    "durationSeconds": 83,
    "durationText": "01:23",
    "viewCount": 457271,
    "likeCount": 3704,
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aiS5qH7UMX4/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "isFamilySafe": true,
    "isLive": false,
    "language": "English (auto-generated)",
    "languageCode": "en",
    "availableLanguages": [{ "label": "English (auto-generated)", "languageCode": "en" }],
    "wordCount": 211,
    "segmentCount": 30,
    "fullTranscript": "hey guys I wanted to show you something kind of cool a little bit of a humble brag...",
    "timestampedTranscript": "[00:00] hey guys I wanted to show you something\n[00:01] kind of cool a little bit of a humble\n...",
    "segments": [
        { "startSeconds": 0.06, "endSeconds": 3.33, "startTime": "00:00", "text": "hey guys I wanted to show you something" },
        { "startSeconds": 1.56, "endSeconds": 5.97, "startTime": "00:01", "text": "kind of cool a little bit of a humble" }
    ],
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-11T15:04:04.979314+00:00",
    "error": null
}

A video without captions

{
    "videoId": "zzzzzzzzzzz",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzzzzzzzzzz",
    "title": null,
    "segmentCount": 0,
    "fullTranscript": null,
    "segments": [],
    "error": "Transcript not available"
}

Something that is not a YouTube link

{
    "videoId": null,
    "input": "not a url",
    "error": "Not a valid YouTube URL or video ID"
}

Output field reference

Field	Type	Description
videoId	string	11-character video ID
url	string	Canonical watch URL
input	string	What you typed for this video
title	string	Video title. The JSON row keeps this name.
videoTitle	string	Same title. This is the Title column on the Output table.
channelName	string	Channel name
channelId	string	Channel ID
channelUrl	string	Link to the channel
description	string	Full video description. The JSON row keeps this name.
videoDescription	string	Same description. The Output table can show this column.
category	string	YouTube category
keywords	array	Video tags
publishedAt	string	Publish date and time, ISO 8601
durationSeconds	integer	Length in seconds
durationText	string	Length as mm:ss or hh:mm:ss
viewCount	integer	Views when scraped
likeCount	integer	Likes when scraped
thumbnailUrl	string	Largest available thumbnail
isFamilySafe	boolean	Family-safe flag
isLive	boolean	Whether it is a live stream
language	string	Name of the caption track used
languageCode	string	Language code of that track
availableLanguages	array	Every caption track on the video
wordCount	integer	Words in the transcript
segmentCount	integer	Lines in the transcript
fullTranscript	string	The whole transcript. The Output overview shows this as Description.
timestampedTranscript	string	The transcript with [mm:ss] on each line
segments	array	Lines with startSeconds, endSeconds, startTime, text
scrapedAt	string	When the row was collected (UTC)
error	string	Reason for failure, or null

Some fields can be null when YouTube does not show them for a video, for example like counts on videos where likes are hidden.

Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or read it through the Apify API.

How it works

1. The input is cleaned up and turned into a video ID. Invalid input gets an error result right away.
2. The video is fetched through Apify Proxy.
3. The video data is extracted and structured as a single result, whether it worked or not.

Integrations

Connect YouTube Transcript Scraper to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable or your own webhook with Apify integrations. Call the actor from Python or JavaScript with the Apify API client to automate transcript extraction.

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Need a Custom Scraper?

Building a SaaS or AI tool that needs custom data extraction? We create production-ready scrapers tailored to your needs.

Contact us: bigibyte.com

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If you need YouTube transcripts with timestamps and real video data, ready for spreadsheets and AI tools, this actor delivers clean, structured results.