Instagram Reels Transcript Scraper - Video to Text, No Login

Turn any public Instagram Reel into text. Paste reel links (or just a creator's username) and get back what is said in each reel: the full transcript, every line with its timestamp, the opening hook, and the spoken language, together with the reel's caption, owner, posting date, likes and comments.

No Instagram account, no login, no cookies, no API key.

In short

You give it	Reel links (instagram.com/reel/..., share links work too) and/or usernames
You get	One row per reel: transcript, timed lines, hook, language, caption, owner, date, likes, comments, views (for profile reels), sound/music, thumbnail
Languages	Detected automatically per reel (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Hindi and many more), or set one yourself
How often	Once, or on a schedule that picks up each creator's new reels only
What you need	A free Apify account. No Instagram login
What it costs	$0.010 per reel (down to $0.008 on higher plans), $0.003 for a reel with no speech (pricing)

Who it's for

• Content creators and social media managers who study what top creators say in their reels: hooks, scripts, calls to action, and how long they take to get to the point.
• Marketing and brand teams who track what competitors and partner creators say about a product.
• Agencies that repurpose clients' reels into blog posts, newsletters, captions, quotes and subtitles.
• Researchers and journalists who need reels as searchable text.
• AI and automation builders who feed reel content into an LLM, a search index or a database (n8n, Make, Zapier, LangChain, your own code).

How to use it (step by step)

1. Open the Actor

Click Try for free (or Start) at the top of this page. You land on the input form. A sample reel is already filled in, so you can press Start right away to see what the output looks like.

2. Add the reels you want

In Reel URLs, add one link per line. Use Bulk edit to paste a whole list at once, then click Set.

All of these work:

You paste	What it is
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Der63knvT6D/	A reel
https://www.instagram.com/reels/Der63knvT6D/	The same reel from the Reels tab
https://www.instagram.com/p/Der63knvT6D/	A video post
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Der63knvT6D/?igsh=...	A link copied from the app's Share button

The same reel pasted twice is transcribed (and charged) once.

3. Or add creators instead

In Profiles (latest reels), add usernames (hubermanlab, @nasa) or profile links (https://www.instagram.com/nasa/). The Actor transcribes each profile's latest reels, up to 12 per profile. Set how many with Latest reels per profile. You can mix profiles and reel links in the same run.

4. Optional: set the language

Leave Spoken language empty and the language is detected for each reel. If you know all your reels are in one language, type its two-letter code (en, es, pt, fr, de, hi...). That helps on short or noisy clips.

5. Press Start

Each reel takes a few seconds. In our tests, the 4 reels below took 18 seconds, and 56 reels took about 9 minutes. Rows appear in the Output tab while the run is going. The table shows the reel, owner, date, length, transcript, hook, language, likes, comments and caption:

Click JSON (or All fields) to see every field, including the timed lines:

6. Download or connect

Use Export to download JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or read the results through the API, n8n, Make or Zapier (below).

7. Put creators on a schedule: only new reels

Want every new reel from a list of creators, transcribed automatically?

1. Add the creators in Profiles (latest reels).

2. Open Scheduling and switch on Only new reels since the last run.

   

3. Click Save as a new task at the top, then open the task's ⋯ menu → Schedule and pick Daily (or hourly, or your own timing).

The first run brings the latest reels. Every run after that brings only reels you haven't received yet, so you never pay twice for the same reel. Use a different Monitor name for each schedule to keep separate lists.

What you get for each reel

A real row from our test run (one profile reel):

{
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/Der63knvT6D/",
  "shortcode": "Der63knvT6D",
  "type": "reel",
  "ownerUsername": "hubermanlab",
  "ownerFullName": "Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.",
  "ownerIsVerified": true,
  "caption": "Comment LIFE and I'll DM you a link to the full episode: What Makes Great Leaders & How to Live an Extraordinary Life | with Dr. Jared Diamond ...",
  "postedAt": "2026-10-19T18:44:37Z",
  "durationSecs": 12.21,
  "viewCount": 372981,
  "likeCount": 3929,
  "commentCount": 265,
  "hasAudio": true,
  "music": null,
  "originalSound": { "title": "Original audio", "owner": "hubermanlab" },
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://scontent-....cdninstagram.com/...jpg",
  "width": 720,
  "height": 1280,
  "sourceProfile": "hubermanlab",
  "transcript": {
    "source": "speech-recognition",
    "language": "en",
    "text": "Make sure that you do something that you enjoy and if people tell you know you got to do this this this tell them to go to hell Am I doing something that I enjoy? Am I doing something that I'm good at? Am I doing something that's that's good for the world?",
    "wordCount": 53,
    "hook": "Make sure that you do something that you enjoy and if people tell you know you got to do this this this tell them to go to hell",
    "segments": [
      { "start": 0, "end": 5.76, "text": "Make sure that you do something that you enjoy and if people tell you know you got to do this this this tell them to go to hell" },
      { "start": 5.76, "end": 9.44, "text": "Am I doing something that I enjoy? Am I doing something that I'm good at?" },
      { "start": 9.44, "end": 11.92, "text": "Am I doing something that's that's good for the world?" }
    ]
  }
}

Field	What it is
transcript.text	Everything said in the reel, as one block of text
transcript.segments	Each spoken line with start and end in seconds: ready for subtitles, quotes or jumping to a moment
transcript.hook	The words spoken in the first 5 seconds (change it with Hook length)
transcript.language	The spoken language (two-letter code)
transcript.wordCount	Number of words spoken
caption	The text the creator wrote under the reel
ownerUsername, ownerFullName, ownerIsVerified, coauthors	Who posted it (and any collab partners)
postedAt	When it was posted (UTC)
durationSecs	Length of the reel in seconds
viewCount	Plays, for reels found through Profiles (empty for reels pasted as links)
likeCount, commentCount	Engagement at the time of the run (likeCount is empty if the creator hides likes)
music, originalSound	The licensed track (title, artist) or the original sound used in the reel
thumbnailUrl, width, height	The cover image and video size
sourceProfile	The profile the reel came from, when you used Profiles
note	no_speech_detected (music only or silent), no_audio_track, or skipped_longer_than_maxDurationSecs
error	Why a reel or profile could not be delivered (see FAQ); these rows are never charged

A run summary (reels done, transcribed, without speech, not found, and so on) is saved as SUMMARY in the run's key-value store.

Settings explained

Setting	What it does	Tip
Reel URLs	The reels to transcribe, one per line	Share links from the app work as they are
Profiles (latest reels)	Usernames or profile links; transcribes each one's newest reels	Up to 12 per profile
Latest reels per profile	How many of each profile's newest reels to take (1–12, default 12)	Lower it to test cheaply
Only new reels since the last run	For profiles: skips reels an earlier run with the same monitor name already delivered	Turn on for anything scheduled
Monitor name	Keeps a separate "already delivered" list per name	One name per schedule, e.g. competitors, my-clients. Change it to start over
Spoken language	Two-letter language code, or empty to detect it per reel	Set it when every reel is in the same language
Skip reels longer than (seconds)	Longer reels come back with their details but no transcript, and are not charged (default 600 = 10 minutes)	Lower it to cap your cost per reel
Maximum reels per run	Stops after this many reels (0 = no limit)	Handy for a first test
Include timed segments	Each spoken line with its start and end time	Turn off if you only need the text
Hook length (seconds)	How many opening seconds go into hook (default 5)	3 for very fast-paced reels

Pricing

You pay only for reels you get. Prices drop on higher Apify plans.

What	Price (Free plan → Gold and above)
Reel transcript (includes up to 2 minutes of audio)	$0.010 → $0.008
Reel with no speech (music only or silent): you still get its details	$0.003
Each extra started minute of audio beyond the first 2 minutes	$0.005
Each run	$0.005 at the default memory (Apify's start fee: $0.00125 per GB of memory)

Never charged: reels that are not found, private, removed or age-restricted, reels longer than your limit, reels that fail, and the same reel pasted twice.

What that looks like:

• 1,000 reels (most reels are under 2 minutes): about $10 on the Free plan, $8 on Gold.
• A 4-minute reel: $0.010 + 2 extra minutes × $0.005 = $0.020.
• 20 creators on a daily schedule, about one new reel each per day: 600 reels a month ≈ $6, plus 30 runs ≈ $0.15.

Apify's free monthly credit covers a good first batch. On the Free Apify plan each run returns up to 10 reels; any paid Apify plan removes that limit.

Connect it to your tools

• n8n: add the Apify node → Run an Actor and get dataset, pick this Actor, paste your input, and send each transcript to Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, Slack or an AI step (summaries, hooks, blog drafts).
• Make / Zapier: use the Apify app's Run Actor action, then map transcript.text, caption and url to your next step.
• API: start a run with one HTTP call and read the results as JSON. The API tab on this page has ready-made examples for cURL, Python and JavaScript. For example, in Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("headply/instagram-reels-transcript-scraper").call(
    run_input={"reelUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/reel/Der63knvT6D/"]}
)
for reel in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(reel["url"], (reel.get("transcript") or {}).get("text"))

• AI agents: the output is plain JSON with stable field names, so it drops straight into an LLM prompt or a vector database.

FAQ

Do I need an Instagram account? No. You only need a free Apify account. There's no Instagram login, no cookies and no API key.

Which reels work? Any reel or video post from a public account. Private accounts, removed reels and age-restricted reels can't be read; they come back as a row with error and are not charged.

How accurate is the transcript? Clear speech in English, Spanish and Portuguese comes out very well in our tests. Other languages work too, with somewhat lower accuracy, especially on short clips with background noise. Setting Spoken language helps. Names, brands and slang can be misspelled, as with any automatic transcript.

What happens with reels that only have music? They come back with their caption, owner and engagement, transcript: null and the note no_speech_detected, for $0.003 instead of the full price. Song lyrics are usually not transcribed.

Does it read the text written on screen? No, only what is spoken. The caption the creator wrote is included as caption.

How many reels can I get from a profile? The latest 12 per profile. For older reels, paste their links in Reel URLs (no limit there).

A profile came back with profile_unavailable or no_reels_found. Why? Some profiles don't show their reels to visitors who aren't logged in, and Instagram sometimes refuses a request for a moment. Try again later, or paste the reel links directly. These rows are never charged.

How long can a reel be? Up to 10 minutes by default (change it with Skip reels longer than). Up to 2 minutes is included in the reel price; each extra started minute is $0.005.

Can I get only new reels every day? Yes: add the creators in Profiles, switch on Only new reels since the last run, and schedule the task (step 7).

Does it download the videos? No. You get the text and the details. The thumbnailUrl links to the cover image.

What data is collected? Only public information that anyone can see on Instagram without logging in. You are responsible for using the transcripts in line with Instagram's terms and copyright law; quoting with credit to the creator is the safe default.

More tools for creators and marketers

• Instagram Highlights Scraper: every story highlight of a profile, with links, stickers and sponsor tags.
• TikTok Transcript Scraper: the same idea for TikTok videos.
• YouTube Transcript Scraper: transcripts for YouTube videos and Shorts.

Questions, or a reel that doesn't work? Open the Issues tab and we'll take a look.