YouTube Transcript Scraper

What is YouTube Transcript Scraper?

YouTube Transcript Scraper extracts complete transcripts from any public YouTube video — with timestamped segments, word counts, and full video metadata in one flat row.

Every transcript comes with exact view counts, ISO 8601 dates, tags, and categories. No post-processing needed.

Data points extracted per video

Field	Description	Example
transcriptText	Full plain text transcript	Apache Spark is an open-source data analytics engine...
transcriptSegments	Timestamped segments (JSON)	[{"start":0.32,"duration":4.08,"text":"Apache Spark..."}]
transcriptLanguage	Actual language returned	en
transcriptWordCount	Word count of full text	1847
transcriptAvailable	Whether captions exist	true
videoId	YouTube video ID	dQw4w9WgXcQ
title	Video title	Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up
publishedAt	ISO 8601 upload date	2009-10-25T06:57:33Z
viewCount	Exact view count	1500000000
likeCount	Exact like count	15000000
commentCount	Exact comment count	3200000
duration	ISO 8601 duration	PT3M33S
durationSeconds	Duration in seconds	213
tags	Video tags	rick astley,never gonna give you up
categoryId	YouTube category ID	10
categoryName	Human-readable category	Music
thumbnailUrl	Video thumbnail	https://i.ytimg.com/vi/.../maxresdefault.jpg
channelName	Channel name	Rick Astley
channelId	Channel ID	UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw

20 fields per video. Transcript + metadata in one row.

Why use this scraper?

Our Actor vs Top YouTube Transcript Actors

Feature	Us	Pinto Studio	StarVibe	Karamelo
Bulk video URLs	✅	❌ 1 only	❌ 1 only	✅
Timestamped segments	✅	✅	✅	✅
Plain text output	✅	❌	✅	✅
Word count	✅	❌	❌	❌
Language selection	✅	✅	✅	❌
viewCount exact integer	✅	❌	❌ abbreviated	❌ abbreviated
likeCount exact integer	✅	❌	❌	❌
publishedAt ISO 8601	✅	❌	✅	✅
tags	✅	❌	❌	✅ keywords
categoryId + categoryName	✅	❌	❌	❌
durationSeconds integer	✅	❌	❌	❌

• One row, full picture — transcript + video metadata in one flat CSV row. No second API call needed.
• Incremental delivery — Results appear in your dataset as each video is processed.
• From $5.00 per 1,000 transcripts — Volume discounts down to $3.00 on Business plan.

Use cases

• Content repurposing — Turn video content into blog posts, newsletters, and social media. The full text is ready for editing, the word count tells you the article length.
• AI/ML training data — Feed structured transcripts with metadata into classification, embedding, or fine-tuning pipelines. Tags and categories provide free labels.
• SEO optimization — Extract keyword-rich transcript text to create written content that boosts organic search rankings.
• Academic research — Build corpora for communication studies, discourse analysis, and media research. Exact timestamps enable precise citation.
• Accessibility — Generate subtitle files from timestamped segments for videos that lack proper captions.
• Competitive analysis — Analyze what competitors talk about, how long their content is, and which topics get the most engagement.

How much does it cost?

Each video counts as one item, whether or not a transcript is available.

Plan	Price per 1,000 items
Free	$5.00
Starter	$4.00
Scale	$3.50
Business	$3.00

Scenario	Items	Cost
5 videos	5	$0.025
50 videos	50	$0.25
500 videos	500	$2.50
1,000 videos	1,000	$5.00

Apify also charges a small compute cost (CU) for the actor's runtime — typically under $0.01 for most runs.

Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
videoUrls	string[]	required	YouTube video URLs or bare video IDs. Supports youtube.com/watch, youtu.be, /shorts/, /embed/, /live/ formats.
language	string	en	Preferred transcript language (ISO 639-1). Falls back to auto-generated captions if manual not available.
includeTimestamps	boolean	true	Include timestamped segments in transcriptSegments. Disable for plain text only.
includeVideoMetadata	boolean	true	Attach video metadata (title, views, likes, tags, category) to each row.

Output example

Each item in the dataset is a single video:

{
  "transcriptText": "We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I...",
  "transcriptSegments": "[{\"start\":0.0,\"duration\":3.12,\"text\":\"We're no strangers to love\"},{\"start\":3.12,\"duration\":4.56,\"text\":\"You know the rules and so do I\"}]",
  "transcriptLanguage": "en",
  "transcriptWordCount": 254,
  "transcriptAvailable": true,
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)",
  "publishedAt": "2009-10-25T06:57:33Z",
  "viewCount": 1500000000,
  "likeCount": 15000000,
  "commentCount": 3200000,
  "duration": "PT3M33S",
  "durationSeconds": 213,
  "tags": "rick astley,never gonna give you up,official music video",
  "categoryId": 10,
  "categoryName": "Music",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "channelName": "Rick Astley",
  "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "scrapeTimestamp": "2026-04-02T12:00:00Z"
}

When transcriptAvailable is false, the video has no captions — transcriptText and transcriptSegments will be empty, but video metadata is still populated.

Download your results as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML from the dataset tab, or access them via the Apify API.

Good to know

Not all videos have transcripts. Videos without captions (manual or auto-generated) will return transcriptAvailable: false. The video metadata is still extracted.

Language fallback. If the requested language isn't available, the scraper falls back to auto-generated captions in the closest available language.

Bulk processing. Videos are processed in batches for efficiency. Large runs (500+ videos) may take a few minutes.

Integrations

Connect this actor to your workflow with Apify integrations:

• Make (Integromat) — trigger workflows when new data is available
• Zapier — push transcripts to Google Sheets, Slack, or databases
• GitHub — store results in repositories
• Google Drive — export directly to spreadsheets
• Webhooks — notify your API when the run completes
• Apify API — programmatic access for custom pipelines

Legal and personal data

This actor extracts publicly available data from YouTube. You should ensure your use of the extracted data complies with YouTube's Terms of Service, applicable data protection laws (GDPR, CCPA), and your jurisdiction's regulations regarding web scraping and data processing.

Transcripts are publicly visible on YouTube when captions are enabled.

Support

Found a bug or have a feature request? Open an issue on the Issues tab or contact us through Apify messaging.