# Instagram Reel Transcript - Speech to Text, SRT & Captions (`eliai/instagram-reel-transcript`) Actor

Turn Instagram Reel links into spoken-word transcripts with Whisper, plus SRT subtitles, the caption, views, likes and creator. No login or API key. $0.03 per reel with speech; private posts and music-only reels are free.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/eliai/instagram-reel-transcript.md
- **Developed by:** [Broke to Built](https://apify.com/eliai) (community)
- **Categories:** Social media, Videos
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $24.00 / 1,000 transcribed reels

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Instagram Reel Transcript - Speech to Text, SRT & Captions

Paste Instagram Reel links and get back **what is actually said in each reel** as clean text, plus
**SRT subtitles**, timestamped segments, the **caption**, and the post's **views, likes, comments
and creator**. It transcribes the reel's audio with Whisper, so it works on any reel with speech,
even when the creator never added captions. No Instagram login, no cookies, no API key.

### What people use it for

- **Content research:** read the scripts of a creator's best reels without watching them one by one.
- **Repurposing:** turn your own reels into blog posts, threads, newsletters or YouTube descriptions.
- **Subtitles:** get an SRT file to burn in or upload alongside the video.
- **Ad and trend analysis:** collect hooks and talking points across many reels into one sheet.
- **AI pipelines:** feed reel transcripts into a summariser, classifier or RAG index.

### Input

```json
{
  "reelUrls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdpAtTHkvgk/",
    "DXuciRbjX2O"
  ],
  "language": "",
  "format": "both"
}
```

- `reelUrls`: reel or video-post links (`/reel/`, `/reels/`, `/p/`) or just the shortcodes.
- `language`: leave empty to auto-detect, or set an ISO code such as `en`, `es`, `pt`, `hi`.
- `format`: `both` (text + segments + SRT), `text`, or `segments`.
- `translateToEnglish`: return the speech translated into English.
- `maxReels` (default 50) and `maxDurationMinutes` (default 15) cap what one run can spend.

An empty input `{}` runs the NatGeo example reel.

### Output

One row per reel:

```json
{
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdpAtTHkvgk/",
  "shortcode": "DdpAtTHkvgk",
  "ownerUsername": "natgeo",
  "ownerVerified": true,
  "caption": "It's not possible to accelerate faster than the speed of light, but th…",
  "viewCount": 282934,
  "likeCount": 21634,
  "commentCount": 186,
  "productType": "clips",
  "ok": true,
  "durationSeconds": 39.06,
  "language": "en",
  "languageProbability": 0.9994,
  "wordCount": 121,
  "text": "You can't speed up and accelerate faster than the speed of light. But there are backdoor ways…",
  "segments": [{ "start": 0.0, "end": 3.36, "text": "You can't speed up and accelerate faster than the speed of light." }],
  "srt": "1\n00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,360\nYou can't speed up…",
  "charged": true
}
```

Download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel. A reel with no speech (music only) still returns its
caption and stats, with `charged: false`.

### Use it from code, n8n, Make or an AI agent

- **API:** `POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/eliai~instagram-reel-transcript/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN`
  with the input above as the JSON body returns the rows directly.
- **No-code:** Apify's n8n, Make and Zapier integrations run it as one step.
- **AI agents:** Apify's MCP server (`https://mcp.apify.com`) exposes it as a tool, so an agent can
  read a reel it was handed.

### Pricing

**$0.03 per reel with speech.** That covers reels up to 3 minutes, which is almost all of them;
longer videos add **$0.015 per extra started minute**. Never charged: private, deleted or
age-restricted posts, photo posts, reels with no speech, partial transcripts, and any failure.
Apify platform usage is included.

### Limits

- Only **public** reels. Private accounts and age-restricted posts return a clear error row, free.
- The transcript is machine speech recognition (Whisper `small`). Clear speech is very accurate;
  heavy music, crosstalk or strong accents lower accuracy, and `languageProbability` tells you how
  sure it was about the language.
- Reels are processed one after another, roughly as fast as they play or faster.
- It reads a reel's public data at the moment you run it; view and like counts change over time.

### FAQ

**Do I need an Instagram account or cookies?** No. It reads the same public data Instagram shows
logged-out visitors.

**Does it use the creator's captions?** It transcribes the audio itself, so it works whether or not
the creator added captions, and it also returns the written caption separately.

**Can I paste a profile link?** Not yet. Paste reel links; one profile's reels can be collected with
any Instagram profile scraper and fed in.

**What languages?** Whisper auto-detects about 100 languages. Set `language` if detection guesses
wrong on a short clip.

### Changelog

- **0.1** (2026-09-25): first release: reel links or shortcodes in; transcript, SRT, segments,
  caption and post stats out; per-reel pricing that never charges for silence or failures.

# Actor input Schema

## `reelUrls` (type: `array`):

Public Instagram Reel or video post links (instagram.com/reel/…, /reels/…, /p/…) or just their shortcodes. Each reel becomes one dataset row with the spoken transcript, SRT subtitles, caption and post stats.

## `language` (type: `string`):

ISO 639-1 code such as `en`, `es`, `pt`, `de`, `hi`. Leave empty to auto-detect; the detected language and its probability are in every row.

## `format` (type: `string`):

`both` returns plain text AND timestamped segments + SRT. `text` returns only the plain text. `segments` returns only segments + SRT.

## `translateToEnglish` (type: `boolean`):

Return the speech translated into English instead of in the original language.

## `maxReels` (type: `integer`):

Stops after this many reels, so a long list cannot cost more than you expect.

## `maxDurationMinutes` (type: `integer`):

Videos longer than this are refused before any compute is spent, and never charged.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "reelUrls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdpAtTHkvgk/"
  ],
  "language": "",
  "format": "both",
  "translateToEnglish": false,
  "maxReels": 50,
  "maxDurationMinutes": 15
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Every reel this run processed, as JSON.

## `resultsCsv` (type: `string`):

The same rows as a spreadsheet-ready CSV.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "reelUrls": [
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdpAtTHkvgk/"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("eliai/instagram-reel-transcript").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "reelUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdpAtTHkvgk/"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("eliai/instagram-reel-transcript").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "reelUrls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdpAtTHkvgk/"
  ]
}' |
apify call eliai/instagram-reel-transcript --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,eliai/instagram-reel-transcript"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/5rHmHyfJ5s8QJeeX6/builds/kbMHxvIdWG9ApDbLK/openapi.json