YouTube Channel Transcript Scraper — every video, one run

Give it a channel. Get back the transcript of every video on it. Plain text for embeddings, optional timestamps for search and clipping. No API key, no cap.

Bulk YouTube transcripts by channel

• Download all transcripts from a YouTube channel
• Export an entire channel's subtitles to JSON or CSV
• Scrape YouTube captions from a channel without an API key
• Build a RAG dataset from a YouTube channel
• Get every transcript from a creator's back catalogue

Pass several channels at once. Each row is tagged with the channel it came from.

Why this one works

Many transcript tools broke when YouTube started requiring proof-of-origin tokens on caption URLs — they return empty results or fail silently. This scraper uses a fallback ladder of client identities, retries on a fresh IP when an exit node is blocked, and reports which route served each result.

You only pay for transcripts

Every item reports exactly what happened, and failures are never charged:

reason	Meaning	Charged
— (ok: true)	Transcript returned	Yes
no-captions	Video is fine, has no captions	No
unavailable	Deleted, private, or region-locked	No
blocked	Extraction route failed	No

Older channels are full of dead and caption-less videos. Those cost you nothing.

Input

Field	Required	Description
channels	yes	URLs, @handles, or channel IDs
maxVideosPerChannel	no	Newest first. Default 100. Your cost ceiling.
language	no	Two-letter code. Default en.
includeSegments	no	Add timestamps. Default false.
maxConcurrency	no	1–25. Default 10.

Accepts youtube.com/@name, /channel/UC..., /c/name, /user/name, or a bare UC... id.

Example input

{
  "channels": ["https://www.youtube.com/@fireship", "@veritasium"],
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 200,
  "language": "en"
}

Output

Every row has the same fields whether it succeeded or failed, so you can select columns without branching. Failed rows are never charged.

Field	Type	Description
sourceChannel	string	The channel input this row came from.
success	boolean	True when a transcript was returned. Failed rows are never charged.
videoId	string	YouTube's 11-character video identifier.
videoUrl	string	Canonical watch URL for the video.
title	string	The video's title as published.
channel	string	Display name of the channel that published the video.
channelId	string	YouTube channel identifier, stable across renames.
durationSeconds	number	Length of the video in seconds.
viewCount	integer	Views at the time of the run.
language	string	BCP-47 code of the caption track returned.
isAutoGenerated	boolean	True when the captions were machine-generated rather than human-authored.
segmentCount	integer	Number of timed segments in the transcript.
fullText	string	The complete transcript as one plain-text string. Null on failure.
segments	array	Timestamped transcript segments. Only present when includeSegments is enabled.
errorCode	string	Machine-readable failure reason. Null on success.
errorMessage	string	Human-readable explanation of the failure. Null on success.

Example — success

{
  "sourceChannel": "https://www.youtube.com/@MITOCW",
  "success": true,
  "videoId": "jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "title": "Me at the zoo",
  "channel": "jawed",
  "channelId": "UC4QobU6STFB0P71PMvOGN5A",
  "viewCount": 358194821,
  "durationSeconds": 19,
  "language": "en",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "segmentCount": 3,
  "fullText": "All right, so here we are, in front of the elephants. The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks.",
  "errorCode": null,
  "errorMessage": null,
  "segments": [
    {
      "start": 0.84,
      "duration": 3.2,
      "text": "All right, so here we are, in front of the elephants."
    },
    {
      "start": 4.04,
      "duration": 3.6,
      "text": "The cool thing about these guys is that they have"
    },
    {
      "start": 7.64,
      "duration": 2.9,
      "text": "really, really, really long trunks."
    }
  ]
}

Example — failure

A failure carries the same fields, so nothing downstream has to branch.

{
  "sourceChannel": "https://www.youtube.com/@MITOCW",
  "success": false,
  "videoId": "s1CFmzZzO4c",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1CFmzZzO4c",
  "title": "Board meeting recording",
  "channel": "Example Corp",
  "channelId": "UCzzz999",
  "viewCount": 412,
  "durationSeconds": 3120,
  "language": null,
  "isAutoGenerated": null,
  "segmentCount": null,
  "fullText": null,
  "errorCode": "no-captions",
  "errorMessage": "This video has no captions published, so there is no transcript to return."
}

Error codes

• no-captions
• unavailable
• blocked
• empty-transcript
• unparseable-input
• error
• unparseable-channel
• channel-blocked

Use it for

• Channel transcripts — a creator's entire back catalogue in one run
• YouTube channel subtitles — every video's captions, bulk exported
• YouTube subtitles in bulk — no per-video calls, no quota
• Documentary and keynote transcripts — a channel's full talk archive
• Webinar transcripts — every recorded session on a channel
• RAG and embedding pipelines over a channel
• Creator and competitor content analysis
• Course and lecture archives, training datasets

Related actors

If you need	Use
Specific videos you already have URLs for	YouTube Transcript Scraper
A playlist rather than a whole channel	YouTube Playlist Transcript Scraper
That channel's Shorts	YouTube Shorts Transcript Scraper
Videos from a keyword search	YouTube Search to Transcripts
Comments instead of the spoken text	YouTube Comments Scraper

Use it from an AI agent (MCP)

This Actor is callable as a tool through the Apify MCP server, so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code can run it directly.

Add the server to your MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Then ask for what you want in plain language — for example “transcribe every video on this YouTube channel” — and the agent calls cleanfeed/youtube-channel-transcript-downloader with the right input. Every output field is described in the dataset schema, so the agent knows what it is getting back before it runs anything.

Call it from code

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")

run = client.actor("cleanfeed/youtube-channel-transcript-downloader").call(run_input={
    "channels": ["https://www.youtube.com/@MITOCW"],
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if item["success"]:
        print(item)

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });

const run = await client.actor('cleanfeed/youtube-channel-transcript-downloader').call({
    channels: ["https://www.youtube.com/@MITOCW"],
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.filter((i) => i.success));

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cleanfeed~youtube-channel-transcript-downloader/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"channels": ["https://www.youtube.com/@MITOCW"]}'

Limitations

• A residential proxy is required. YouTube serves playabilityStatus: ERROR to datacenter IP ranges while the identical request succeeds from a home connection — measured 12/12 success on residential against 0/12 on a cloud host with no proxy, and 7/12 through a datacenter proxy. The input defaults to residential; changing it will break most runs. Full method and per-environment figures are published in the reliability benchmark.
• Not every video has captions. Videos with captions disabled return errorCode: no-captions and are never charged. This is a property of the video, not a failure of the run.
• Long-form videos only. The channel's Shorts feed is a separate surface — use YouTube Shorts Transcript Scraper for those.
• Large channels take time. Set maxVideosPerChannel to cap both runtime and spend.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key?

No key, no OAuth, no quota. The official Data API cannot return auto-generated captions in any case.

How many videos will it fetch?

Every long-form video on the channel, capped by maxVideosPerChannel. Set that to control both runtime and spend on large channels.

Does this include the channel's Shorts?

No — Shorts are a separate feed. Use YouTube Shorts Transcript Scraper for those.

Why does my own script fail in production?

YouTube blocks datacenter IPs. This Actor uses residential egress by default, which is why the same request succeeds here.

Which channel URL formats work?

Channel URLs, /@handle, /channel/UC..., /c/name and /user/name, plus a bare UC... id.

Notes

Only publicly available caption data is collected. No login, no personal data, no video downloads.