YouTube Transcript API

Extract transcripts, captions, and subtitles from any YouTube video. Supports 100+ languages, auto-generated captions, timestamps, SRT/VTT export, playlists, channels, and search queries.

What does YouTube Transcript API do?

YouTube Transcript API extracts the full transcript (captions/subtitles) from YouTube videos and returns them as structured data with timestamps, video metadata, and multiple export formats.

Unlike other transcript tools, this actor doesn't require any API keys, browser extensions, or YouTube Data API quotas. It works directly with YouTube's public caption system, supporting both manually created and auto-generated (speech-to-text) captions.

You can input individual video URLs, video IDs, entire playlists, channel pages, or even search queries — the actor will discover all videos and extract their transcripts automatically.

Use Cases

• Content creators — Repurpose video content into blog posts, social media, or newsletters
• Researchers — Analyze spoken content at scale for academic studies or market research
• SEO professionals — Extract video transcripts to create text-based content for search engines
• AI/ML engineers — Build training datasets from YouTube content for language models
• Accessibility teams — Generate text versions of video content for deaf/hard-of-hearing users
• Journalists — Quickly get searchable text from interviews and press conferences
• Language learners — Extract bilingual transcripts for study materials

Features

• Extract transcripts from any YouTube video with captions
• Support for 100+ languages with automatic language detection
• Auto-generated (speech-to-text) and manual caption support
• Translate transcripts to any language using YouTube's built-in translation
• Multiple output formats: JSON with timestamps, plain text, SRT, VTT
• Batch processing: playlists, channels, and search results
• Full video metadata: title, channel, views, publish date, description, thumbnail
• Direct video ID input for maximum speed
• Shows all available caption languages per video
• Handles private/unavailable videos gracefully with clear error messages
• Proxy support for reliable scraping at scale

How much will it cost?

YouTube Transcript API is extremely efficient — it uses only HTTP requests (no browser), making it very fast and cheap.

Videos	Estimated Cost	Time
10	< $0.01	~10 sec
100	~$0.02	~1 min
1,000	~$0.15	~5 min
10,000	~$1.50	~45 min

Cost Component	Per 1,000 Videos
Platform compute (256 MB)	~$0.05
Datacenter proxy	~$0.10
Total	~$0.15

YouTube has generous rate limits, so datacenter proxies work well — no expensive residential proxies needed.

How to use

1. Go to the YouTube Transcript API page on Apify Store
2. Click "Start" or "Try for free"
3. Enter YouTube URLs, video IDs, or search terms
4. Choose your preferred language and output format
5. Click "Start" and download the results

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
startUrls	array	YouTube video, playlist, or channel URLs	-
videoIds	array	Direct video IDs (11 characters)	-
searchTerms	array	Search YouTube and extract from results	-
language	string	Preferred transcript language (ISO code)	en
includeAutoGenerated	boolean	Use auto-generated captions when manual ones are unavailable	true
translationLanguage	string	Translate transcript to this language	-
outputFormat	string	json, plaintext, srt, or vtt	json
includeTimestamps	boolean	Include start/duration per segment	true
includeVideoMetadata	boolean	Include title, channel, views, etc.	true
maxItems	number	Maximum videos to process	50
proxyConfig	object	Proxy configuration	Apify Proxy

Output

The actor produces a dataset with the following fields:

{
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)",
    "channelName": "Rick Astley",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
    "description": "The official video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley...",
    "viewCount": 1500000000,
    "publishDate": "2009-10-25",
    "duration": "3:33",
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "language": "en",
    "languageName": "English",
    "isAutoGenerated": true,
    "isTranslated": false,
    "availableLanguages": ["en (auto)"],
    "transcript": [
        { "text": "We're no strangers to love", "start": 18.0, "duration": 3.5 },
        { "text": "You know the rules and so do I", "start": 22.0, "duration": 3.2 }
    ],
    "fullText": "We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I...",
    "formattedTranscript": null,
    "segmentCount": 68,
    "totalDurationSecs": 213,
    "scrapedAt": "2024-01-15T10:30:00.000Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
url	string	YouTube video URL
videoId	string	11-character video ID
title	string	Video title
channelName	string	Channel name
channelUrl	string	Channel URL
description	string	Video description
viewCount	number	Total view count
publishDate	string	Upload date (YYYY-MM-DD)
duration	string	Video duration (M:SS or H:MM:SS)
thumbnailUrl	string	Highest resolution thumbnail
language	string	Transcript language code
languageName	string	Language display name
isAutoGenerated	boolean	Whether captions are auto-generated
isTranslated	boolean	Whether the transcript was translated
availableLanguages	array	All available caption languages
transcript	array	Array of segments with text, start time, and duration
fullText	string	Complete transcript as a single string
formattedTranscript	string	SRT or VTT formatted transcript (when format is srt/vtt)
segmentCount	number	Number of transcript segments
totalDurationSecs	number	Total transcript duration in seconds
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 scrape timestamp

Output formats

JSON (default)

Returns structured data with timestamps per segment. Best for programmatic access and analysis.

Plain Text

The fullText field contains the entire transcript as a single string. Best for content repurposing and text analysis.

SRT

Industry-standard subtitle format. The formattedTranscript field contains:

1
00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:21,500
We're no strangers to love

2
00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:25,200
You know the rules and so do I

VTT

Web-native subtitle format. The formattedTranscript field contains:

WEBVTT

00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:21.500
We're no strangers to love

00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:25.200
You know the rules and so do I

Integrations

Connect YouTube Transcript API with other tools:

• Apify API — REST API for programmatic access
• Webhooks — Get notified when extraction finishes
• Zapier / Make — Connect to 5,000+ apps
• Google Sheets — Export transcripts directly to spreadsheets

API Example (Node.js)

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('glassventures/youtube-transcript-api').call({
    videoIds: ['dQw4w9WgXcQ'],
    language: 'en',
    outputFormat: 'json',
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items[0].fullText);

API Example (Python)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_TOKEN')

run = client.actor('glassventures/youtube-transcript-api').call(run_input={
    'videoIds': ['dQw4w9WgXcQ'],
    'language': 'en',
    'outputFormat': 'json',
})

items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items[0]['fullText'])

API Example (cURL)

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/glassventures~youtube-transcript-api/runs" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -d '{"videoIds": ["dQw4w9WgXcQ"], "language": "en"}'

Tips and tricks

• Use video IDs for fastest processing — skip URL parsing overhead
• Batch by playlist — paste a playlist URL to extract all video transcripts at once
• Translation — set translationLanguage to get transcripts in any language, even if the original isn't in that language
• Cost optimization — set includeVideoMetadata: false if you only need the transcript text
• SRT/VTT export — use these formats for direct import into video editors like Premiere Pro, Final Cut, or DaVinci Resolve

FAQ

Q: Does this actor require a YouTube API key? A: No. It works without any API keys or authentication. It uses YouTube's public caption system.

Q: How fast is the extraction? A: Approximately 100-500 videos per minute depending on concurrency settings. Each video requires only 2 HTTP requests.

Q: What if a video has no captions? A: The actor returns the video with transcript: null and segmentCount: 0. The availableLanguages field will be empty.

Q: Can I get transcripts from private or age-restricted videos? A: No. Only publicly available videos with captions are supported. Private and age-restricted videos are reported with a clear error message.

Q: Does this work with YouTube Shorts? A: Yes. YouTube Shorts URLs are automatically detected and processed.

Q: Can I extract transcripts in multiple languages from the same video? A: Run the actor multiple times with different language settings, or use the translationLanguage field to translate from the base language.

Q: What should I do if I get blocked? A: YouTube rarely blocks transcript extraction. If you experience issues, try using Apify Proxy with the default datacenter settings.

Is it legal to scrape YouTube transcripts?

Extracting publicly available captions from YouTube is generally considered legal for personal use, research, and analysis purposes. This actor only accesses publicly available caption data that YouTube makes available to all viewers. Always review YouTube's Terms of Service for your specific use case. For more information, see Apify's blog on web scraping legality.

Limitations

• Only works with videos that have captions (manual or auto-generated)
• Private, age-restricted, and deleted videos are not accessible
• YouTube auto-generated captions may contain inaccuracies (speech-to-text errors)
• Translation quality depends on YouTube's auto-translation engine
• Channel and playlist extraction is limited to the initially loaded videos (~30-100)

Changelog

• v0.1 — Initial release with full transcript extraction, multi-language support, SRT/VTT export, playlist/channel/search support