YouTube Transcript Scraper

Extract transcripts and timestamped caption segments from public YouTube videos. Export text for summaries, RAG, content research, and AI-agent workflows.

At a glance

• Transcript extraction: Convert public YouTube captions into clean transcript text.
• Timestamped segments: Keep start and duration values for quotes, clips, RAG chunks, and evidence tables.
• URL and ID input: Use watch URLs, Shorts URLs, youtu.be links, embed URLs, live URLs, or raw video IDs.
• Metadata option: Include public title, channel name, duration, and thumbnail URL when available.
• Batch-safe errors: Videos without public captions save clear status rows instead of failing the whole run.
• Bounded video work: A slow or blocked video becomes an actionable error row instead of consuming the whole run timeout.
• Subtitle exports: Optionally return SRT and WebVTT alongside JSON transcript text and segments.

Ready-to-run examples

• Extract YouTube transcripts for AI summaries - Get transcript text ready for summaries and LLM workflows.
• Extract timestamped YouTube transcript segments - Keep segment timing for quotes, clips, and RAG chunks.
• Batch extract YouTube video captions - Process a small list of captioned videos.
• YouTube video to SEO transcript text - Use transcript text for content and search workflows.

View all ready-to-run examples

What can it do?

YouTube Transcript Scraper turns public YouTube captions into structured data.

It accepts YouTube watch URLs, Shorts URLs, youtu.be links, embed URLs, live URLs, or raw video IDs.

For every video, it returns a dataset row with the video ID, URL, title, channel name, caption language, transcript text, and optional timestamped segments.

Videos without public captions are handled gracefully with a clear error message instead of failing the whole run.

Common workflows

• SEO and content teams: repurpose transcripts into briefs, blog drafts, quote libraries, keyword research, and content audits.

• Researchers and analysts: collect spoken content from public videos for media monitoring, qualitative research, public-interest analysis, or education datasets.

• LLM and RAG builders: create clean text chunks from public captions for search, summarization, classification, embeddings, and retrieval workflows.

• Sales and marketing teams: extract talks, interviews, demos, webinars, and competitor videos into searchable text for faster review.

• Journalists and fact checkers: create searchable transcript records for public videos, speeches, interviews, and announcements.

Why use this actor?

• Structured output with one row per video
• Transcript text plus timestamped segments
• Public caption language selection
• Graceful handling for videos with no captions
• Works with video URLs and video IDs
• Low-cost runs for captioned public videos
• Output ready for spreadsheets, APIs, and AI workflows

What data can you extract?

Field	Description
videoId	YouTube video ID
videoUrl	Canonical watch URL
title	Public video title when available
channelName	Public channel name when available
language	Caption language used
isAutoGenerated	Whether the selected captions appear auto-generated
transcriptText	Full transcript as one clean text string
segments	Timestamped transcript segments
duration	Video duration in seconds when available
thumbnailUrl	Public thumbnail URL when available
captionsAvailable	Whether public caption tracks were found
status	Machine-readable success or error result
errorCode	Stable reason such as NO_CAPTIONS, BLOCKED, RATE_LIMITED, or VIDEO_TIMEOUT
requestedLanguages	Caption languages requested in priority order
availableLanguages	Public caption tracks, names, generated status, and translation availability
isTranslated	Whether YouTube translated the selected caption track
segmentCount	Number of returned caption segments
charCount	Character count of transcriptText
processingTimeMs	Per-video processing time
srt / vtt	Optional ready-to-save subtitle text
error	Explanation for unavailable captions or failed videos

Pricing

This Actor uses Apify pay-per-event pricing. The prices below come from the current Actor pricing configuration. Apify public plans map to Store discount tiers, so the table shows both the user-facing plan context and the pricing tier name. The final price shown in Apify depends on the user account plan and any custom agreement.

Event	What is charged	Price
start	One-time fee charged when a run starts. Covers fixed startup cost (init, proxy warmup, first HTTP setup).	$0.005

Event	What is charged	Free / no discount	Starter / Bronze	Scale / Silver	Business / Gold	Custom / Platinum	Custom / Diamond
transcript	Charged per transcript extracted.	$0.15338 / 1,000	$0.13338 / 1,000	$0.10403 / 1,000	$0.08003 / 1,000	$0.05335 / 1,000	$0.03735 / 1,000

Apify may also charge platform usage for compute, storage, proxies, or data transfer outside this Actor pricing. Check the Actor run and the Apify Pricing tab for the exact cost shown to your account.

How to use YouTube Transcript Scraper

1. Open the actor on Apify.
2. Paste one or more public YouTube video URLs.
3. Optionally set a preferred caption language such as en, es, or de.
4. Choose whether to include timestamped segments.
5. Click Start.
6. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML.

Input configuration

Setting	JSON key	What to enter
YouTube video URLs	videoUrls	Public YouTube watch, Shorts, youtu.be, embed, or live URLs.
YouTube video IDs	videoIds	Raw 11-character IDs when you already have them.
Caption language	language	Preferred caption language such as en, es, or de.
Preferred languages	languages	Optional language codes in priority order; takes precedence over legacy language.
Include timestamps	includeTimestamps	Whether to include timestamped transcript segments.
Include metadata	includeMetadata	Whether to include video metadata with transcript text.
Additional formats	outputFormats	Add srt or vtt; JSON fields are always returned.
Transcript window	startSeconds, durationSeconds	Return only captions overlapping a time range. Zero keeps the full remaining transcript.
Maximum videos	maxVideos	Cost and size cap for the run.
Concurrency	maxConcurrency	Videos processed in parallel, from 1 to 10.
Deadlines	requestTimeoutSecs, videoTimeoutSecs	Bound individual requests and total time spent on one video.
Proxy configuration	proxyConfiguration	Apify proxy settings for the run.

Example input

{
  "videoUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" }
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "includeTimestamps": true,
  "includeMetadata": true,
  "maxVideos": 1
}

Example output

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Example video title",
  "channelName": "Example channel",
  "language": "en",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "transcriptText": "We're no strangers to love...",
  "segments": [
    { "start": 0.0, "duration": 2.1, "text": "We're no strangers to love" }
  ],
  "duration": 213,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/...",
  "captionsAvailable": true
}

Accepted YouTube URL formats

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID
• https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID
• https://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID
• https://www.youtube.com/live/VIDEO_ID
• Raw VIDEO_ID values

Caption language selection

Set legacy language to one preferred caption language code, or use languages for an ordered fallback list.

If that exact language is not available, the actor falls back to a related language variant or the first public caption track.

For example, en may match English captions when present.

The selected language is returned in language; requestedLanguages, availableLanguages, and isTranslated explain the decision.

SRT, WebVTT, and transcript windows

JSON transcript fields are always returned. Set outputFormats to include srt or vtt when you also need subtitle-file text for editors, players, or archives.

Use startSeconds with optional durationSeconds to keep only caption segments overlapping a time window. The default zero values preserve the full transcript.

Timestamped transcript segments

Enable includeTimestamps to receive segment-level timing.

Each segment can include:

• start — segment start in seconds
• duration — segment length in seconds
• text — spoken caption text

Disable timestamps when you only need the combined transcript text.

Metadata fields

Enable includeMetadata to include public video details when available.

Metadata can include title, channel name, duration, and thumbnail URL.

Some unavailable or restricted videos may return less metadata.

Handling videos with no captions

Not every public YouTube video has public captions.

When captions are unavailable, the actor still saves a row with:

• captionsAvailable: false
• the video ID and URL
• an error message explaining what happened

This makes batch runs easier to audit because one bad video does not stop the rest of the run.

Run diagnostics and failure handling

Every run writes RUN_SUMMARY to the default key-value store. It reports requested and unique videos, invalid and duplicate inputs, successful transcripts, error rows, timeouts, blocks, and no-caption results.

Equivalent URLs and repeated IDs are processed once. Slow or blocked videos have a per-video deadline and save an error row; successful rows are saved together with their transcript charge so row and charge counts remain aligned.

Tips for best results

• Use public videos with captions enabled.
• Start with a small batch to confirm your input format.
• Use language when you need a specific caption language.
• Keep maxVideos low for testing and increase it after validation.
• Check captionsAvailable before using transcript text in automated workflows.

AI-agent recipe

Goal: turn public webinar or video captions into a summary and quote table.

Input:

{
  "videoUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" }
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "includeTimestamps": true,
  "includeMetadata": true,
  "maxVideos": 1
}

Prompt to use with Claude / ChatGPT / MCP: "Extract transcripts from these public YouTube URLs. Create a table with video URL, key claims, notable quotes, and timestamps."

Follow-up automation:

• Schedule: Run after each new public webinar, podcast, or product video is published.
• Export: Docs, Sheets, a vector DB, or Slack summaries for content review.
• Guardrail: Use only public caption tracks returned by the actor; respect copyright and platform terms.

Integrations

You can connect the dataset to:

• Google Sheets for editorial review
• Zapier or Make for automations
• Vector databases for embeddings and retrieval
• BI tools for media analysis
• Internal dashboards for monitoring public video content
• LLM workflows for summarization, tagging, and question answering

API usage

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('fetch_cat/youtube-transcript-scraper').call({
  videoUrls: [{ url: 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ' }],
  language: 'en',
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items[0].transcriptText);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
import os

client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('fetch_cat/youtube-transcript-scraper').call(run_input={
    'videoUrls': [{'url': 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ'}],
    'language': 'en',
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items[0].get('transcriptText'))

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetch_cat~youtube-transcript-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"videoUrls":[{"url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"}],"language":"en"}'

MCP and AI agents

Use this actor through Apify MCP when you want an AI assistant to fetch public video transcripts.

MCP server URL pattern:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch_cat/youtube-transcript-scraper

Claude Code setup:

$claude mcp add apify-youtube-transcripts --transport http --url "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch_cat/youtube-transcript-scraper"

Claude Desktop JSON config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify-youtube-transcripts": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch_cat/youtube-transcript-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• "Extract the transcript from this public YouTube video and summarize the key claims."
• "Get transcripts for these five public webinar URLs and make a topic table."
• "Find quotes in this public interview transcript about pricing."

Common use cases

• Video-to-blog repurposing
• Public webinar transcript extraction
• Research corpus creation
• Podcast-style YouTube episode analysis
• Competitive content monitoring
• Training data preparation from public captions
• Subtitle QA and language availability checks

Limitations

This actor extracts public captions only.

It cannot access private videos, members-only videos, deleted videos, region-blocked content unavailable to the runner, or videos without public caption tracks.

Transcript quality depends on the caption track provided for the public video.

Auto-generated captions may contain recognition errors.

Legality and responsible use

Use this actor only for content you are allowed to access and process.

YouTube videos and captions may be protected by copyright or platform terms.

You are responsible for ensuring that your use case, storage, redistribution, and analysis comply with applicable laws, platform rules, and rights-holder requirements.

FAQ

Does it work without a YouTube account?

Yes, the actor is designed for public videos and public caption tracks.

Can it extract transcripts from private videos?

No. Private, members-only, deleted, or otherwise inaccessible videos are outside scope.

Why did a video return captionsAvailable=false?

The video may not have public captions, the video may be unavailable, or YouTube may not expose captions for that video.

Can I choose a language?

Yes. Use language for one code or languages for an ordered list such as ["de", "en"].

Can I download SRT or WebVTT?

Yes. Add srt or vtt to outputFormats. The result row includes ready-to-save subtitle text.

Are timestamps included?

Yes, when includeTimestamps is enabled.

Why are captions imperfect?

Some videos use auto-generated captions. These can include speech-recognition mistakes.

Troubleshooting

My run succeeded but transcript text is empty

Check the error and captionsAvailable fields. The video probably has no public caption track.

My preferred language was not returned

Inspect requestedLanguages, availableLanguages, and isTranslated. The requested track may not exist, or YouTube may have translated another public track.

A row has VIDEO_TIMEOUT, BLOCKED, or RATE_LIMITED

The Actor stopped work on that video so the rest of the batch could finish. Use the default residential proxy, retry the affected public URL later, or increase videoTimeoutSecs within its allowed range.

Related Actors

• YouTube Search Results Scraper - discover public videos before extracting transcripts.
• YouTube Channel Videos Scraper - build a channel video URL inventory.
• YouTube Playlist Videos Scraper - expand playlists into transcript-ready video URLs.
• YouTube Video Details Scraper - enrich transcript rows with additional public video metadata.

Support

Report bugs or wrong output from the Actor page. Include the Apify run ID or run URL, input JSON, expected output, actual output, and one reproducible public URL from YouTube when possible.

Privacy and data handling

This Actor runs with Apify limited permissions and processes the public YouTube video URLs, caption tracks, and optional public video metadata needed for the requested output. Results are stored in Apify run storage for your account. FetchCat does not use your inputs or outputs for advertising or model training and does not retain them outside the Apify run except for transient support debugging when you explicitly share run details. You are responsible for lawful use, platform rules, copyright, and avoiding unnecessary personal or sensitive data in inputs.