YouTube Transcript Scraper Pro (Captions + AI Fallback)
Pricing
from $0.70 / 1,000 transcript extracteds
Extract YouTube transcripts at scale without burning through your budget. It starts with free captions whenever they're available, then switches to AI only for videos that don't have them. You stay in control of costs, and the output — JSON, SRT, VTT, plain text, or LLM-ready format
AI Min Charged
ai_duration_charged_min
Optional
Number of AI minutes charged for this video (AI transcription only).
Available Languages
available_languages
Optional
The caption language codes the video does have, on LANGUAGE_NOT_FOUND and CAPTION_FETCH_FAILED items — use them to adjust your languages input.
[ "en", "es", "fr"]Error Message
error
Optional
What happened and what to do about it, on error items.
Error Code
error_code
Optional
What went wrong, for filtering. Error items are never charged. RUN_VIDEO_LIMIT_REACHED (the run already took 500 videos, the most one run transcribes), INVALID_URL (not a YouTube video, playlist or channel URL), URL_EXPANSION_FAILED (a playlist or channel could not be listed), BOT_DETECTION (YouTube asked for human verification), AGE_RESTRICTED (the video requires age verification), PRIVATE_OR_UNAVAILABLE (private, removed or blocked in the region), LIVE_VIDEO (a live stream, which cannot be transcribed until it is archived), EXTRACTION_ERROR (the video's information could not be read), CAPTION_FETCH_FAILED (a caption track exists but could not be downloaded), LANGUAGE_NOT_FOUND (captions exist, but not in the requested languages), NO_CAPTIONS_AVAILABLE (the video has no captions and AI transcription is off), CAPTIONS_NOT_READY (the video's auto-captions are listed but not generated yet, typical of a recent upload — retry later or enable AI fallback), AI_FALLBACK_SKIPPED_TOO_LONG (the video is longer than 120 minutes, or than skipAiFallbackIfLongerThan), AI_MINUTES_LIMIT_REACHED (the run's maxAiMinutes budget, at most 600, would be exceeded), AI_TRANSCRIPTION_FAILED (the audio could not be downloaded or transcribed).
AI Transcribed
is_ai_generated
Optional
True if the transcript was produced by the built-in speech-to-text model.
Auto-generated
is_auto_generated
Optional
True if YouTube auto-generated the captions.
Language Fallback
is_language_fallback
Optional
True when none of the requested caption languages exist but a caption track in the video's original spoken language does, and useAnyAvailableCaptionLanguage delivered that track instead.
Machine Translated
is_machine_translated
Optional
True when the transcript was machine-translated from the video's original caption track into the requested language (machineTranslateCaptions).
Language
language
Optional
Language code of the transcript. For native captions, the code YouTube lists the track under (e.g. en, zh-TW, pt-BR); for AI transcriptions, the language the model detected or the one set in forceWhisperLanguage (e.g. en, zh, de).
Language Forced
language_was_forced
Optional
True if the language was set via forceWhisperLanguage (AI transcription only).
metadata
Optional
Video metadata. Absent on error items where the video could not be read; url is there instead.
{ "id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ", "title": "Example Video Title", "channel": "Example Channel", "duration": 213}Requested Languages
requested_languages
Optional
The caption languages the user requested, echoed on language-fallback items.
[ "en"]Retryable
retryable
Optional
Whether retrying this item is expected to help (yes, no, conditional).
transcript_json
Optional
Timestamped transcript segments. Each segment has start (seconds), end (seconds), and text. When wordLevel is enabled, each segment also includes a words array with per-word timestamps: [{start, end, text}].
[ { "start": 0, "end": 3.5, "text": "Hello world.", "words": [ { "start": 0, "end": 1.2, "text": "Hello" }, { "start": 1.3, "end": 3.5, "text": "world." } ] }]LLM-Ready Text
transcript_llm
Optional
LLM-optimised transcript: filler tokens ([Music], (laughter), etc.) stripped, whitespace normalised.
SRT Subtitles
transcript_srt
Optional
Transcript in SRT subtitle format.
Plain Text
transcript_text
Optional
Full transcript as plain text, segments joined with spaces.
WebVTT Subtitles
transcript_vtt
Optional
Transcript in WebVTT format.
Translated From
translated_from
Optional
Language code of the original caption track a machine-translated transcript was produced from.
url
Optional
The URL as given, on error items where the video's metadata could not be read.