YouTube Transcript Scraper — Captions & Subtitles, Cheap

Get the transcript of any YouTube video, or of every video in a channel, playlist or search, as clean text, timed segments, SRT or WebVTT. No API key, no login, no browser.

What you get

• Transcripts for videos, channels, playlists and searches. Paste video URLs or IDs, a channel (/@handle), a playlist or a results page, or just type search queries.
• Manual captions first. For each language you list, the creator's own captions are preferred over auto-generated ones. Turn auto-generated captions off if you only want human-made ones.
• Language control. Give an ordered list (en, es, pt-BR...), fall back to any available language, and see every available track in availableLanguages.
• Four output formats. Timed segments (start, duration, text), plain text, an SRT file or a WebVTT file.
• Metadata included. Title, channel, publish date, duration, word count.
• Pay only for transcripts. Videos without captions are reported (status no_captions) but never billed.

Input

Field	Description
startUrls	Video URLs/IDs, channels, playlists, search URLs (one per line)
searchQueries	Keywords; only videos with subtitles are returned
maxItems	Max transcripts returned and billed (default 20)
maxVideosPerSource	Videos read from each channel/playlist/search (default 20)
languages	Preferred language codes in order (default ["en"])
includeAutoGenerated	Allow auto-generated captions (default on)
fallbackToAnyLanguage	Use another language if none of yours exist (default on)
translateTo	Optional target language code. Best effort, see FAQ
outputFormat	segments, text, srt, vtt or all
proxyConfiguration	Datacenter by default; escalates to residential automatically if YouTube asks for a bot check

Example:

{
  "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", "https://www.youtube.com/@TED/videos"],
  "languages": ["en", "es"],
  "maxItems": 50,
  "maxVideosPerSource": 25,
  "outputFormat": "segments"
}

Output

{
  "videoId": "jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "title": "Me at the zoo",
  "channelName": "jawed",
  "language": "en",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "status": "ok",
  "transcript": "All right, so here we are, in front of the elephants ...",
  "segments": [{ "start": 1.2, "duration": 2.16, "text": "All right, so here we are, in front of the elephants" }],
  "wordCount": 39,
  "durationSeconds": 19,
  "availableLanguages": [{ "languageCode": "en", "languageName": "English", "isAutoGenerated": false, "isTranslatable": true }]
}

status is ok, no_captions (no matching track), unavailable (private, removed, age-gated) or error.

Pricing

Event	Price
Transcript returned	US$1.00 per 1,000 videos

Videos without captions and failed videos are free. Set a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops exactly at your limit.

FAQ

Does it need a YouTube API key? No. Which videos work? Any public video that has captions (manual or auto-generated). Private, deleted and age-restricted videos are reported as unavailable. Can it transcribe audio when there are no captions? No. It reads existing captions only. Does translation work? translateTo uses YouTube's own caption translation. YouTube rate-limits it aggressively, so when it is refused the Actor returns the original language and says so in error. Is it fast? About 250 transcripts in 90 seconds on a laptop.

Use cases

Training and RAG datasets, summarisation, SEO and content repurposing, topic research across a channel, subtitle files for editors, accessibility.

En español

Obtén la transcripción de cualquier video de YouTube, o de todos los videos de un canal, lista o búsqueda, como texto, segmentos con tiempo, SRT o VTT. Prefiere los subtítulos manuales sobre los automáticos, permite elegir idioma y no necesita API key. Solo pagas por transcripciones entregadas: US$1 por cada 1.000 videos.