YouTube Transcript Scraper

Get the transcript (subtitles / captions) of any YouTube video — as timestamped segments and as plain text. Works with regular videos, Shorts, live recordings, playlists and whole channels. No browser, no YouTube API key, no login.

You pay only for videos that actually returned a transcript. Videos without captions, private or deleted videos are reported in the dataset with an error field and are not charged.

What you can do with it

• Feed video transcripts to an LLM: summaries, RAG, content repurposing, SEO articles
• Analyse what a channel talks about — give a channel URL and get transcripts of its latest videos
• Build subtitle datasets in a chosen language
• Monitor competitors, podcasts and interviews

Input

Field	Description
videos	Video URLs or IDs (watch?v=, youtu.be/, /shorts/, /embed/, /live/), playlist URLs, channel URLs or @handles
languages	Preferred languages in order, e.g. ["en", "es"]. Manual captions are preferred over auto-generated. If none match, the default track is returned
includeTimestamps	Include the segments array (default true)
includeMetadata	Add publish date, category and description (default true)
maxVideosPerList	How many videos to take from each playlist / channel (default 50)
proxyConfiguration	Optional. The scraper picks a working route itself

{
  "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", "https://www.youtube.com/@TED"],
  "languages": ["en"],
  "maxVideosPerList": 20
}

Output

One item per video:

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "channel": "Rick Astley",
  "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "durationSeconds": 213,
  "viewCount": 1700000000,
  "publishedAt": "2009-10-24T23:57:33-07:00",
  "category": "Music",
  "language": "en",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "availableLanguages": [{ "code": "en", "name": "English", "isAutoGenerated": false }],
  "segmentCount": 61,
  "segments": [{ "start": 18.64, "duration": 3.24, "text": "♪ We're no strangers to love ♪" }],
  "text": "♪ We're no strangers to love ♪ ♪ You know the rules and so do I ♪ ...",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-08T12:00:00+00:00"
}

If a transcript cannot be returned, the item contains error (for example No captions available for this video. or Video unavailable: Private video) and is free.

Notes

• Age-restricted and members-only videos need a signed-in account and are not supported.
• Machine translation of captions is not offered: YouTube's translation endpoint refuses automated requests. The transcript is returned in the best matching original language.