YouTube Transcript Scraper — Reliable, Pay Only for Results

Get YouTube transcripts, captions and subtitles from single videos, Shorts, whole channels, playlists or YouTube search results. Clean text, timestamped lines, SRT subtitles, 100+ languages and built-in translation.

You only pay for transcripts you actually get. Videos without captions, private videos and failed requests are free and clearly marked in the output.

What you get

Field	Details
📝 transcript	The full transcript as clean text, ready for AI, summaries or search
⏱️ segments	Every caption line with start time and duration
🎬 srt	Optional SRT subtitle text, ready to save as a .srt file
🌍 language	Language used, whether captions are human-made or auto-generated, and all languages available for the video
🔄 translation	Optional translation into any language YouTube supports
ℹ️ video info	Title, channel, duration and views (when available)

Why this scraper

• Reliable — automatic retries with fresh sessions, and an automatic switch to residential proxies when YouTube blocks.
• Fair pricing — charged per transcript returned. No captions = no charge.
• Bulk friendly — paste a channel or playlist link and get transcripts for its latest videos in one run.
• Smart language choice — give your preferred languages in order; human-made captions are used first, auto captions as backup.
• Built on actively maintained open-source tools, so it keeps working when YouTube changes.

Use cases

• AI & LLM workflows — feed transcripts into ChatGPT, Claude or your RAG pipeline for summaries, Q&A and research.
• Content repurposing — turn videos into blog posts, newsletters, threads and captions.
• SEO & research — analyze what competitors and creators talk about.
• Education & accessibility — study notes, subtitles and translations.
• Market research — collect opinions from reviews and interviews at scale.

How to use

1. Paste one or more YouTube URLs: videos, Shorts, channels (like @TED) or playlists.
2. Optionally add search queries to get transcripts for the top search results.
3. Choose your preferred languages (e.g. en, ar) and, if you like, a language to translate to.
4. Click Start and download results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or connect them to your apps and AI agents.

Input example

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@TED"
  ],
  "maxVideosPerSource": 10,
  "languages": ["en"],
  "includeTimestamps": true,
  "includeSrt": false
}

Output example

{
  "videoId": "jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "title": "Me at the zoo",
  "channel": "jawed",
  "language": "English",
  "languageCode": "en",
  "isGenerated": false,
  "isTranslated": false,
  "transcript": "All right, so here we are in front of the elephants...",
  "wordCount": 34,
  "segments": [
    { "start": 1.2, "duration": 2.16, "text": "All right, so here we are, in front of the elephants" }
  ],
  "availableLanguages": [
    { "languageCode": "en", "language": "English", "isGenerated": false }
  ]
}

Videos without a transcript look like this and are not charged:

{
  "videoId": "abc123def45",
  "error": "This video has no captions (subtitles are turned off).",
  "noTranscript": true
}

Pricing

Pay per event: one "transcript" event for each video that returns a transcript. Platform and proxy usage are included. Videos without captions, private or unavailable videos and failed requests are free.

Good to know

• Transcripts come from YouTube's own captions (human-made or auto-generated). Videos with captions turned off have no transcript.
• Age-restricted and members-only videos are not public, so their transcripts can't be collected.
• For channels and playlists, the latest videos are taken first, up to your Max videos setting.

Is it legal?

This Actor collects publicly available captions only. It does not log in or collect personal data. You are responsible for using transcripts in line with copyright law and YouTube's terms.

Feedback

Found a problem or want a feature? Open an issue on the Issues tab — it gets answered quickly.