YouTube Transcript Scraper

Get transcripts and subtitles from YouTube videos, Shorts, whole channels, playlists and search results, as plain text, timestamped segments or AI-ready chunks for RAG.

$2 per 1,000 transcripts. You only pay for transcripts that were found. Videos without subtitles are listed with a status but are not charged.

Why this scraper

• ✅ Whole channels, playlists and search results in one run, not just single videos
• ✅ Pay only for success: no charge for videos without transcripts
• ✅ AI-ready chunks with start and end times for RAG, embeddings and LLM prompts
• ✅ Language control: preferred languages, fallback, human-made subtitles first
• ✅ Fast and cheap: smart proxy rotation keeps runs reliable without residential-proxy prices

What you get

Field	Description
videoId, url, title, channel, durationSeconds	Video info (title, channel and duration are filled for channel, playlist and search inputs)
status	ok, transcripts_disabled, no_transcript_in_requested_languages, video_unavailable, age_restricted or failed
language, languageCode, isGenerated, isTranslated	Which transcript was used
availableTranscripts	All transcript languages the video offers
text	Full transcript as one string
segments	[{start, duration, text}] with timestamps in seconds
chunks	Optional [{start, end, text}] blocks of a set size, ready for embeddings
wordCount	Number of words

Inputs

• Videos, channels or playlists: any mix of video URLs, IDs, Shorts, @channel URLs and playlist URLs.
• Search queries: fetch transcripts of the top results for a keyword.
• Preferred languages: e.g. en, de. Falls back to any available language unless you switch it off.
• Translate to: try YouTube's built-in translation into one language. YouTube does not always allow this; if it refuses, you get the original transcript and a translationError note, and you are charged the normal price.
• AI-ready chunk size: splits each transcript into chunks with start and end times.

Example output

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "status": "ok",
  "languageCode": "en",
  "isGenerated": false,
  "wordCount": 412,
  "text": "We're no strangers to love ...",
  "segments": [{"start": 18.64, "duration": 3.24, "text": "We're no strangers to love"}]
}

Use cases

• Feed video content into ChatGPT, Claude or your own RAG pipeline
• Summarise, translate or repurpose videos into blog posts and newsletters
• Research what competitors and creators say about a topic
• Build datasets for content and market analysis

How much does it cost?

Transcripts	Price
100	$0.20
1,000	$2.00
10,000	$20.00

Videos without transcripts are free. With the Apify free plan's $5 monthly credit you can test it at no cost.

FAQ

Does it work for auto-generated subtitles? Yes. Human-made subtitles are preferred when both exist; set preferManualTranscripts to false to change that.

Can I get transcripts in another language? Choose preferred languages. Translation uses YouTube's own translations when YouTube allows it; otherwise you get the original language.

What if a video has no transcript? It appears in the results with a status such as transcripts_disabled and is not charged.

Is this a YouTube Transcript API? Yes. Call it via the Apify API, MCP or integrations and get JSON back, an alternative to youtube-transcript-api or the YouTube Data API captions endpoint, without OAuth.

Use it with Claude, ChatGPT and other AI agents

1. Add the Apify MCP server to your assistant (e.g. in Claude: Settings → Connectors → add https://mcp.apify.com, then sign in with Apify).
2. Ask in plain language. The assistant finds this Actor, runs it and works with the results.

Or connect only this Actor: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fast_data_asap/youtube-transcript-scraper

Example prompts:

• "Get the transcripts of the last 20 videos from @hubermanlab and summarise the key advice."
• "Fetch the transcript of this video and turn it into a blog post: https://youtu.be/..."

You can also run it via the Apify API, on a schedule, or connect it to Make, Zapier, n8n and Google Sheets.

Free n8n workflow

Summarise new videos of a YouTube channel with AI into Google Sheets – import-ready n8n workflow using this Actor. More in Data Recipes.

Pay per call with x402 – no account needed

AI agents can run this Actor and pay per call with x402 (USDC stablecoin payments over HTTP) through Apify's agentic payments – no Apify account or API key required. You pay the same pay-per-event prices listed above. Details: Apify x402 integration.

Notes

• Only publicly available transcripts are read. No login, no cookies, nothing is downloaded.
• Cheap data-center proxies are used first; blocked requests are retried automatically through residential proxies.
• Transcripts belong to their creators. Make sure your use complies with copyright and YouTube's terms.