YouTube Channel Transcripts: Every Video of a Channel

What does YouTube Channel Transcripts do?

YouTube Channel Transcripts downloads the transcripts of every video of a YouTube channel or playlist in one run: give a @handle, a channel link or a playlist link and get one row per video, newest first, as plain text, timestamped segments, SRT or VTT subtitles, Markdown or RAG-ready chunks, with title, duration, views, keywords and description. No YouTube API key.

Schedule it with Only new videos and every run returns (and charges) only what the channel uploaded since the last run: a ready-made feed of new videos as text for newsletters, research or an LLM.

It runs on the Apify platform, so you also get an API, scheduling, integrations (Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack) and access for AI agents through the Apify MCP server.

Independent tool, not affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube or Google LLC. It only reads publicly available captions.

Why use it?

• 📚 Research a creator or competitor: every video of the channel as searchable text.
• 🤖 Build a dataset or a RAG index from a whole channel, already chunked with timestamps.
• 📰 Watch a channel: a weekly run with Only new videos gives you each new upload as text.
• ✍️ Repurpose your own channel into blog posts, show notes and social posts.

How to download all transcripts of a YouTube channel

1. Click Try for free.
2. In YouTube channels or playlists, enter @handle, youtube.com/@handle, youtube.com/channel/UC... or a playlist link.
3. Set Max videos per channel (up to 2,000; listing the channel is free).
4. Optionally turn on Only new videos and choose the output formats.
5. Click Start and download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Input

{
  "channels": ["@TED"],
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 50,
  "onlyNewVideos": true,
  "outputs": ["text", "srt"]
}

Single videos (videos) and YouTube searches (searchQueries) also work in the same run.

Output

Real result from a run on 2026-10-13 (text shortened):

{
  "videoId": "CKAyfGItpgg",
  "title": "How to Start Any Conversation the Right Way | Chris Fenning | TED",
  "channel": "TED",
  "foundIn": "TED",
  "language": "en",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "durationSeconds": 667,
  "viewCount": 108964,
  "text": "I want to be long-winded and unclear. It's not a common opening line. Most people won't tell us when they're going to be long-winded, but we know...",
  "wordCount": 1759,
  "transcriptSource": "captions"
}

Field	Description
text, segments, srt, vtt, markdown, chunks	The transcript in the formats you choose
foundIn	The channel or playlist the video was listed from
language, isAutoGenerated	Caption language and whether it was generated automatically
title, durationSeconds, viewCount, keywords, description	Video details
status	ok (billed), no-captions, unavailable or error (not billed)

How much does it cost to download a channel's transcripts?

Event	Price
Run start (per GB of memory, default 256 MB)	$0.001
Transcript (one video, all formats, with video details)	$0.003
AI transcription minute (only with aiFallback, videos without captions)	$0.010

100 transcripts cost $0.30, residential proxies included. Listing the channel is free: you pay only for transcripts returned. Videos without captions, private or removed videos and failures are never billed. Set Max cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly at that limit.

Use it with AI agents (MCP)

Add https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fguiraud/youtube-channel-transcripts to Claude, Cursor or any MCP client and ask "Get the last 20 videos of @TED as text and summarize the main ideas." Common field names (channel, handle, url...) are accepted.

FAQ and limitations

• Order: videos come newest first, Shorts and past live streams included.
• Videos without captions: they come back with status: "no-captions" and are not billed, unless you turn on aiFallback to transcribe them with AI (open-source Whisper, $0.010 per minute).
• Age-restricted, private and members-only videos cannot be read without signing in; they come back as unavailable and are not billed.
• Is it legal? The Actor reads the captions YouTube shows publicly on each video. Respect the rights of the video creators when you reuse their content.
• Found a problem or need a feature? Open an issue on the Issues tab.
• Did it save you time? A short review on the Reviews tab helps other people find this Actor.

Related tools

• Single videos or many links: YouTube Transcript Scraper.
• Videos about a topic: YouTube Search Transcripts.