YouTube Transcript (Clean)

Extract YouTube video transcripts as clean, readable text — no duplicated karaoke lines, no timestamp soup. Paste one URL or a batch, get back prose paragraphs, per-line timestamps, and a ready-to-use SRT string.

Why this one

• Clean text out of the box. YouTube auto-captions are a rolling karaoke buffer: in some caption formats each cue re-emits the tail of the previous one, so naive scrapers return transcripts with phrases duplicated throughout. This actor compares normalized word sequences across cues and removes those overlaps whenever they appear, so what you get reads like prose.
• Original language preferred. If a video was auto-dubbed, asking for "en" on many tools returns a machine translation of the original speech. This actor prefers the track in the language actually spoken (-orig) when one exists.
• Honest billing. You are charged only for videos that actually yield a transcript. Videos with no captions return an error record and cost nothing.
• Fast. No browser, no rendering — a typical video takes well under a second; a 1-hour talk takes a few seconds.

Input

Field	Description
videoUrl	Any YouTube URL (watch, youtu.be, shorts, embed) or a bare 11-character video ID
videoUrls	Batch of videos in one run — one video without captions never stops the rest
language	Preferred caption language code (en, es, de, …), default en
format	paragraphs (readable prose, default) or raw (one block)
includeTimestamps	Adds per-line timestamps and an SRT subtitle string (default true)
maxVideos	Safety cap, 1–200 — also your budget cap since billing is per transcript

Output (one record per video)

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "ok": true,
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video)",
  "channel": "Rick Astley",
  "durationSeconds": 213,
  "language": "en",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "isOriginalLanguageTrack": true,
  "cuesRaw": 61,
  "cuesAfterDedup": 59,
  "duplicationRemovedPct": 3,
  "wordCount": 478,
  "transcript": "We're no strangers to love. You know the rules and so do I...",
  "segments": [{ "start": 18.64, "timestamp": "00:18", "text": "We're no strangers to love" }],
  "srt": "1\n00:00:18,640 --> 00:00:21,880\n..."
}

Videos without captions come back as { "ok": false, "error": "No captions available for this video" } — never charged.

Pricing

$0.004 per transcript. For comparison, the most-used alternatives in this category charge $0.01 (pintostudio/youtube-transcript-scraper) and $0.005 (starvibe/youtube-video-transcript) per transcript (measured 2026-08-07). Videos without captions are never charged.

Common uses

• Feed video content to an LLM (summaries, Q&A, RAG pipelines) without paying for duplicated text
• Subtitle files (SRT) for re-uploads, translations, or accessibility
• Research and content analysis across channels
• Show notes, blog posts, and quotes from talks and podcasts

Notes

• Works with auto-generated (ASR) and manually uploaded captions, in any language YouTube serves.
• Extraction talks to YouTube's own player API — no rendering, no third-party transcript services.
• If YouTube has no captions at all for a video (some music videos, very new uploads), there is nothing to extract; you are not charged for those.

Use from code or AI agents

Run it from any HTTP client and get the transcripts back in the same call:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/eliai~youtube-transcript-clean/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", "format": "paragraphs"}'

Or with the Apify JS client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('eliai/youtube-transcript-clean').call({
  videoUrls: ['dQw4w9WgXcQ', 'jNQXAC9IVRw'],
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

AI agents can call this actor as a tool through Apify's MCP server — an MCP-enabled agent can discover it, read the input schema, and fetch transcripts autonomously.

FAQ

How do I get the transcript of a YouTube video as plain text? Paste the video URL into videoUrl and run — the transcript field of the result is clean prose with duplicated caption fragments removed.

Does it work on videos without manual subtitles? Yes — auto-generated (ASR) captions are supported in any language YouTube serves. If a video has no captions at all, you get an ok: false record and are not charged.

Can I download subtitles as an SRT file? Yes. With includeTimestamps on (the default), every result includes a ready-to-use srt string — save it as subtitles.srt.

Does it work with YouTube Shorts and youtu.be links? Yes — watch, youtu.be, shorts, and embed URLs all work, as do bare 11-character video IDs.

Why do transcripts from other tools repeat phrases twice? YouTube auto-captions are a rolling karaoke buffer; in some formats each cue re-emits the tail of the previous one. This actor compares normalized word sequences across cues and removes those overlaps, so the text reads like prose.

How do I transcribe a whole list of videos at once? Put up to 200 URLs in videoUrls — one captionless video never stops the rest, and you pay only per transcript actually extracted.

Can I get the transcript in a specific language? Set language (e.g. es, de). If a video was auto-dubbed, the track in the language actually spoken is preferred over a machine translation of it.