YouTube Transcript Scraper

A high-performance scraper to extract transcripts and subtitles directly from YouTube videos.

ℹ️ This scrapes public YouTube transcripts — no authentication required. It uses lightweight HTTP requests instead of heavy browser automation for maximum speed.

Features

• Batch URL Processing: Extract transcripts from multiple YouTube videos in a single run.
• Timestamp Mode: Optionally include timestamps indicating exactly when each spoken segment occurs.
• Smart Fallback Mechanisms: Automatically tries multiple internal YouTube APIs (InnerTube, then HTML scraping fallback) for maximum reliability.
• Clean Text Parsing: Cleanly handles complex XML subtitle structures and HTML entities to return pure text.
• High Performance Execution: Runs fully headless via pure HTTP GET/POST requests, vastly outperforming Puppeteer approaches.
• Proxy Support: Integrates Apify Proxies seamlessly via Undici to bypass region or rate-limit blocks.

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
startUrls	Array	A list of YouTube video URLs to process (max 3 per run).
includeTimestamps	String	"Yes" to return timestamps with text, or "No" (default) for a single combined plain text string.
proxy	Object	Proxy configuration. Recommended for preventing region blocking.

Output

Data is stored in the default dataset in JSON format.

Example: Plain Text Mode (includeTimestamps="No")

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9DwXeAtWrs",
  "transcript": "When the Romans officially pulled out of Britain in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, they left in their wake a patchwork of Brethonic and Romano British kingdoms scattered throughout [music] the island. Just like on the mainland, however, it didn't take long for warlike peoples on the peripheries to move in and take",
  "error": null
}

Example: With Timestamps (includeTimestamps="Yes")

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9DwXeAtWrs",
  "transcript": [
    {
      "timestamp": "0:02",
      "text": "When the Romans officially pulled out of"
    },
    {
      "timestamp": "0:04",
      "text": "Britain in the fourth and fifth"
    },
    {
      "timestamp": "0:06",
      "text": "centuries AD,"
    },
    {
      "timestamp": "0:09",
      "text": "they left in their wake a patchwork of"
    },
    {
      "timestamp": "0:12",
      "text": "Brethonic and Romano British kingdoms"
    },
    {
      "timestamp": "0:16",
      "text": "scattered throughout [music] the island."
    },
    {
      "timestamp": "0:21",
      "text": "Just like on the mainland, however, it"
    },
    {
      "timestamp": "0:23",
      "text": "didn't take long for warlike peoples on"
    },
    {
      "timestamp": "0:26",
      "text": "the peripheries to move in and take"
    }
  ],
  "error": null
}