YouTube Transcript Scraper — Get Video Captions & Subtitles by URL

Extract the full YouTube transcript of any video by URL or ID. This YouTube transcript scraper returns timestamped caption segments and clean, joined plain text, and can process a whole list of videos in one run. No login, no cookies, no YouTube Data API key — paste a link and get the transcript.

Quick start (input → output)

Input:

{ "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"], "lang": "en" }

Output (one row per video):

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en",
  "text": "[Music] We're no strangers to love. You know the rules and so do I...",
  "segments": [
    { "startTime": "0:00", "startMs": 320, "text": "[Music]" },
    { "startTime": "0:18", "startMs": 18560, "text": "We're no strangers to love" }
  ],
  "segmentCount": 52,
  "durationSeconds": 212
}

What this actor does

• Accepts one or many YouTube videos (watch?v=, youtu.be/, /shorts/, or a bare 11-char ID).
• Returns, per video: the ordered transcript segments (with start time), the full transcript as one plain-text string, the segment count, and the video duration.
• Optional preferred lang; falls back to the video's default language when the requested one isn't published.

Input parameters

Field	Type	Required	Description
videos	array of strings	✅	YouTube video URLs or 11-character IDs. One transcript per video.
lang	string	—	Preferred 2-letter language code (e.g. en, es, de). Blank = default.

Important notes

• One row is produced per input video. Videos with captions disabled return an error row (and are not charged).
• lang is a preference, not a guarantee — if unavailable, the default transcript is returned.

More input examples

{ "videos": ["dQw4w9WgXcQ", "https://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0"] }

{ "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/shorts/abc123DEF45"], "lang": "es" }

Output

Field reference

Field	Description
videoId	The 11-character YouTube video ID.
url	Canonical watch URL.
language	Language requested (default if none given).
text	Full transcript as a single normalized string.
segments	Array of { startTime, startMs, text } in order.
segmentCount	Number of caption segments.
durationSeconds	Transcript end time in seconds.

Output examples

Empty / no captions (not charged):

{ "status": "error", "error": "No transcript is available for this video (captions may be disabled). You were not charged.", "_query": "{\"input\":\"...\",\"lang\":null}" }

Bad input (not charged):

{ "status": "error", "error": "That input is not a valid YouTube video URL or ID. Please check it and try again. You were not charged." }

Service busy / temporary (not charged):

{ "status": "error", "error": "The transcript service is temporarily unavailable — please retry shortly. You were not charged." }

Use cases

• Content & SEO: turn videos into blog posts, summaries, and searchable text.
• Researchers / students: read and quote long talks and lectures without watching in full.
• AI / LLM pipelines: feed clean transcripts to summarizers, RAG, or translation.
• Accessibility: produce readable captions and text alternatives.

Best practices

• Batch many videos in one run instead of one run per video.
• Pass IDs directly when you already have them — it's the same result.
• Expect an error row (unbilled) for private, region-locked, or caption-disabled videos.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: you are charged once per transcript returned. Error rows (no captions, bad input, temporary failures) are never charged.

Legality

Transcripts are publicly available caption data. Use this actor for content you have the right to process, and comply with YouTube's Terms of Service and applicable law. You are responsible for how you use the exported data.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. Can it do Shorts? Yes — pass the /shorts/ URL or the ID. Which languages? Whatever the video publishes; use lang to prefer one. Why did a video return an error? Captions are disabled/unavailable, or the link was invalid — you were not charged. Can I get just plain text? Use the text field; ignore segments.

Support

Questions or a field you need added? Email contact@endspec.net — we typically reply within one business day.