YouTube Transcript Scraper - Subtitles & Captions for Videos, Channels, Playlists

Get YouTube transcripts (subtitles / captions) for single videos, Shorts, entire channels, playlists and search results - as plain text, timestamped segments or ready-to-use SRT.

$2 per 1,000 transcripts. No start fee, no subscription. Videos without captions are never charged.

Why this scraper

• Fast - talks to YouTube's own data API, no browser, no page downloads (about 0.2 s per video)
• Pay only for results - private, deleted or caption-less videos appear in the dataset with a clear error reason and cost nothing
• Bulk input - mix video URLs, @handles, channel URLs, playlists and search queries in one run
• Any language - choose preferred languages in order (e.g. es, en), falls back to the original language
• Human vs auto-generated - prefers uploaded captions, tells you which one you got (isAutoGenerated)
• Video details included - title, channel, views, duration, description, tags, thumbnail
• Automatic retry through a fresh proxy IP when YouTube rate-limits a request

Use cases

• AI / LLM pipelines - feed video content into ChatGPT, Claude, RAG and vector databases
• Content repurposing - turn videos into blog posts, newsletters, social posts
• SEO & research - analyse what competitors and creators talk about
• Summaries, notes and study material from lectures, podcasts and tutorials
• Subtitles - download SRT files for translation or re-upload

Input example

{
  "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jPQjjsBbIc", "https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw"],
  "channels": ["@veritasium"],
  "searchQueries": ["how to make sourdough bread"],
  "maxVideosPerSource": 20,
  "languages": ["en"],
  "outputFormat": "both"
}

Output example

{
  "videoId": "8jPQjjsBbIc",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jPQjjsBbIc",
  "title": "How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed | Daniel Levitin | TED",
  "channelName": "TED",
  "durationSeconds": 740,
  "viewCount": 19926969,
  "language": "en",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "wordCount": 2232,
  "text": "A few years ago, I broke into my own house. I had just ...",
  "segments": [{"start": 13.24, "duration": 2.56, "text": "A few years ago, I broke into my own house."}],
  "availableLanguages": [{"language": "en", "name": "English", "isAutoGenerated": false}],
  "sourceType": "video"
}

Pricing

You pay $0.002 per video with a transcript ($2 per 1,000). Videos that have no captions, are private, deleted or blocked are listed with an error field and are not charged. Set a maximum cost per run in the run options if you want a hard budget.

FAQ

Does it work for Shorts and live streams? Yes, if the video has captions (auto-generated captions are available for most spoken videos).

Can I get a whole channel? Yes - add the channel URL or @handle and set maxVideosPerSource. Choose Videos, Shorts or Live streams in Channel content.

Which languages? Any language YouTube has captions for. Put your preferred languages in order; if none exists and Fall back to any language is on, you get the original track.

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