# TikTok Transcript Scraper · captions + AI fallback, no API key (`blue59/tiktok-transcript-ai`) Actor

Transcript of any TikTok video. Uses TikTok's own auto-captions when they exist (fast, $0.002) and built-in Whisper AI when they don't, so every spoken-word video gets text. No API key. Quality-gated: empty or garbage results are never returned or charged.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/blue59/tiktok-transcript-ai.md
- **Developed by:** [Blue59](https://apify.com/blue59) (community)
- **Categories:**
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $2.00 / 1,000 caption transcript (per video)s

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## TikTok Transcript Scraper · captions + AI fallback

**Paste TikTok video links — get the full spoken text.** No API key, no login, no video download on the caption path.

Most spoken-word TikToks already carry TikTok's own auto-generated captions. This Actor reads them directly (two small requests per video, fast and cheap). When a video has **no** captions — music-only clips, some regions, some creators — it transcribes the audio with Whisper large-v3-turbo instead, so you still get text. Every result passes a quality gate: empty, truncated or garbage transcripts are reported as failures and **never charged**.

### Why this one

| | This Actor | Caption-only scrapers | AI-only transcribers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Videos with TikTok captions | ✅ $0.002 | ✅ ~$0.001 | ✅ $0.03+ |
| Videos **without** captions | ✅ AI fallback | ❌ nothing | ✅ |
| Quality gate (no charge for junk) | ✅ | – | – |
| API key needed | no | no | usually |

### Output

```json
{
  "platform": "tiktok",
  "id": "7307726351291960622",
  "url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@renreports/video/7307726351291960622",
  "title": "Influencer media kits - mistakes and steps to make one…",
  "author": "renreports",
  "duration": 139,
  "uploadDate": "20231201",
  "viewCount": 123456,
  "language": "eng-US",
  "source": "caption:tiktok-asr",
  "charCount": 2819,
  "aiMinutes": 0,
  "transcript": "I work in influencer marketing and I look at media kits all day long…"
}
```

`source` tells you where the text came from: `caption:tiktok-asr` (TikTok's own captions), `caption:manual` / `caption:auto` (other platforms) or `ai:groq-whisper-turbo`.

### Pricing (pay per event)

- **Caption transcript** — charged when TikTok already has captions for the video.
- **AI transcript** + **AI minute** — charged only when AI transcription succeeds; minutes are counted per started minute of audio.
- **Bring your own Groq key** (optional) — pay only the small per-result fee on the AI path, no per-minute charge. Free keys at [console.groq.com](https://console.groq.com).

Set **Max minutes per video** to cap cost on long videos (default 30). Turn **AI transcription** off to pay for captions only.

### Input

| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| `videoUrls` | TikTok video links (full or `vm.tiktok.com` short links); other platforms also accepted |
| `aiTranscription` | Use AI when TikTok has no captions (default on) |
| `languageHint` | Spoken language code for the AI path (e.g. `en`, `zh`, `vi`) |
| `maxMinutes` | Skip AI for videos longer than this |
| `groqApiKey` | Optional: your own key (cheaper AI path) |
| `preferredLanguages` | Caption track priority when TikTok offers several |

### Who uses this

- Trend & competitor research: turn viral TikToks into searchable text
- Feeding RAG, summarization and LLM pipelines with clean transcripts
- Subtitling, translation, accessibility
- Brand & social listening at scale

### Notes

TikTok occasionally blocks datacenter IPs for some videos — keep Apify Proxy enabled (default); the Actor retries through a second exit automatically. Failures are classified (proxy / rate-limit / blocked / network / other) in the run report so you can see *why* something failed, not just that it did. Profile pages are not expanded (one video per URL) to keep runs predictable and cheap.

# Actor input Schema

## `videoUrls` (type: `array`):

One TikTok video per line: https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/123… or short links (vm.tiktok.com / vt.tiktok.com). Other platforms (YouTube, Facebook, X…) also work but are not this Actor's focus.

## `aiTranscription` (type: `boolean`):

Most spoken-word TikToks carry TikTok's own auto-captions (used first, cheapest). When a video has none, built-in Whisper (large-v3-turbo) transcribes the audio — charged per video + per audio minute. Turn off to use TikTok captions only (videos without captions are then skipped, not charged).

## `languageHint` (type: `string`):

ISO code of the spoken language, e.g. en, zh, ja, es, vi, id. Leave empty for auto-detect. Only used on the AI path.

## `maxMinutes` (type: `integer`):

Videos longer than this are skipped for AI transcription (cost guard). Caption path is not limited.

## `groqApiKey` (type: `string`):

Bring your own key from console.groq.com and pay only a small per-result fee on the AI path (no per-minute charge). Used for this run only, never stored.

## `preferredLanguages` (type: `array`):

Which caption track to prefer when TikTok offers several (e.g. original + translated).

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Upper limit per run.

## `minChars` (type: `integer`):

Results shorter than this are treated as failures (not charged).

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Apify Proxy is recommended; TikTok sometimes blocks datacenter IPs.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@renreports/video/7307726351291960622",
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7231338487075638570"
  ],
  "aiTranscription": true,
  "maxMinutes": 30,
  "preferredLanguages": [
    "en",
    "zh-Hant",
    "zh-TW",
    "zh-Hans",
    "zh",
    "ja",
    "ko",
    "es",
    "fr",
    "de",
    "pt",
    "vi",
    "id",
    "th"
  ],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "minChars": 20,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `transcripts` (type: `string`):

所有結果(JSON)/ All results as JSON

## `transcriptsCsv` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.tiktok.com/@renreports/video/7307726351291960622",
        "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7231338487075638570"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("blue59/tiktok-transcript-ai").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.tiktok.com/@renreports/video/7307726351291960622",
        "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7231338487075638570",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("blue59/tiktok-transcript-ai").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@renreports/video/7307726351291960622",
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7231338487075638570"
  ]
}' |
apify call blue59/tiktok-transcript-ai --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,blue59/tiktok-transcript-ai"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/2OYJDFzFqX9ViIL70/builds/K04hg1E2R4UmqLi6Y/openapi.json