YouTube Transcript Scraper

Get the transcript of any YouTube video, Short, playlist or whole channel as clean data: plain text ready for ChatGPT, Claude or your RAG pipeline, timestamped segments, and SRT subtitles on request, in the language you choose. Each row also carries the video's title, channel, duration and views. Videos without captions are free. No API key, no login, no quota.

• Bulk: paste video URLs, a playlist, or a channel (@handle) and get every video's transcript in one run.
• Any language the video has: creator-written captions first, YouTube's auto-generated captions otherwise. Ask for en, fr, es, pt-BR... and fall back to the spoken language when a video has no captions in yours.
• AI-ready: one clean text field per video plus wordCount; segments with start times for citations and chapters; srt for subtitles.
• Reliable: YouTube blocks most cloud servers from transcripts; this actor switches to residential IPs automatically when that happens, at no extra cost to you.
• $3 per 1,000 transcripts. You only pay for transcripts delivered.

Sample output

Real rows from a run on a playlist and a channel:

Video	Channel	Language	Captions	Words
But what is a neural network? / Deep learning chapter 1	3Blue1Brown	en	creator	3,357
Transformers, the tech behind LLMs / Deep Learning Chapter 5	3Blue1Brown	en	creator	5,137
The Insane Engineering of Fiber Optics	Veritasium	en	creator	6,412
Is there something faster than light?	Veritasium	en	auto-generated	161
The NEW Tesla Roadster: My Honest Reaction	Marques Brownlee	en	creator	4,196

Quick start

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk",
    "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_ZCJB-3pi",
    "@veritasium"
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "maxVideosPerSource": 50
}

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
urls	array	required	Video, Shorts or live URLs or IDs, playlist URLs, channels (@handle, /channel/UC... or channel URL).
language	string	empty	Transcript language code (en, fr, es, de, pt-BR...). Empty = the language spoken in each video.
languageFallback	boolean	true	No captions in your language: return the spoken-language transcript instead of an error.
includeAutoGenerated	boolean	true	Allow YouTube's automatic captions when the creator wrote none.
maxVideosPerSource	integer	50	Videos per playlist or channel (newest first for channels). 0 = all.
includeTimestamps	boolean	true	Add segments: {start, duration, text} in seconds.
includeSrt	boolean	false	Add the transcript as SRT subtitles.

Output

One row per video:

{
  "videoId": "aircAruvnKk",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk",
  "title": "But what is a neural network? | Deep learning chapter 1",
  "channelName": "3Blue1Brown",
  "channelId": "UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw",
  "durationSeconds": 1120,
  "viewCount": 24934237,
  "isLive": false,
  "description": "What are the neurons, why are there layers, and what is the math underlying it?\nHelp fund ...",
  "language": "en",
  "languageName": "English",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "requestedLanguage": "en",
  "usedFallbackLanguage": false,
  "spokenLanguage": "en",
  "availableLanguages": [
    "ar",
    "bn",
    "cs",
    "de",
    "el",
    "en",
    "..."
  ],
  "text": "This is a 3. It's sloppily written and rendered at an extremely low resolution of 28x28 pixels, but your brain has no trouble recognizing it as a 3. And I want ...",
  "wordCount": 3357,
  "segments": [
    {
      "start": 4.22,
      "duration": 1.18,
      "text": "This is a 3."
    },
    {
      "start": 6.06,
      "duration": 4.653,
      "text": "It's sloppily written and rendered at an extremely low resolution of 28x28 pixels,"
    }
  ],
  "srt": null,
  "source": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk",
  "error": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-23T00:20:00+00:00"
}

isAutoGenerated tells creator-written captions from YouTube's automatic ones. spokenLanguage is the language of the audio; availableLanguages lists every caption language the video has. Videos that cannot give a transcript get a row with error (no captions, private, deleted, region-blocked) and are not charged.

Pricing

$3 per 1,000 transcripts (one transcript event per video with a transcript), plus a tiny actor-start fee. Rows with an error are free. Store discounts apply on higher Apify plans.

Use cases

• AI and RAG: feed lectures, podcasts and tutorials to ChatGPT, Claude or a vector database
• Content repurposing: blog posts, newsletters, show notes and quotes from videos
• Research and monitoring: what a channel, a brand or an expert said, searchable
• SEO and accessibility: subtitles (SRT) and text versions of your own videos

Integrations

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("cycha/youtube-transcript-scraper").call(run_input={
    "urls": ["@veritasium"],
    "maxVideosPerSource": 20,
    "language": "en",
})
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if row.get("text"):
        print(row["title"], row["wordCount"], row["text"][:200])

Works with Make, Zapier, n8n, LangChain and LlamaIndex (Apify dataset loaders), schedules and webhooks, and as an MCP tool for AI agents.

FAQ

Can it transcribe videos that have no captions? Not yet: it returns the captions YouTube has (creator-written or auto-generated). YouTube auto-generates captions for most videos in common languages; the few without any are listed with an error and not charged.

Can it translate? It returns the languages the video already has captions in (many popular videos have dozens; see availableLanguages). Machine translation by YouTube is not offered because YouTube rate-limits it heavily.

Shorts and live streams? Yes, as long as they have captions (live streams get them after the broadcast).

How fast? About 40 transcripts in 15 seconds in our tests.

Is it legal? The actor reads publicly available captions. You are responsible for how you use them and for respecting copyright and YouTube's terms.

Feedback

Missing a field or a feature? Open an issue on the Issues tab. If this saved you time, a short review on the Store page helps other people find it.

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