YouTube Transcript Scraper

Pricing note: Apify may display this Actor as Pay per event, but the effective pricing is equivalent to $1 per 1,000 successful transcripts. Each successful transcript creates one dataset item. Failed items are not pushed to the dataset and are not billed.

Extract YouTube transcripts from public video URLs through Hexa API's production-grade delivery layer. This Actor is built for teams that want a simple input, stable output, and a high-availability service experience instead of managing transcript infrastructure themselves.

Every request is routed through Hexa API's dedicated transcript service, where we normalize responses, enforce input validation, and isolate upstream failures behind a cleaner contract for Apify users. Only successful transcript results are written to the dataset.

Why teams use this Actor

• High-availability delivery through Hexa API's managed transcript service
• Stable, normalized output for downstream automations and data pipelines
• Support for single URLs and bulk URL arrays in one run
• Up to 20 video URLs per run
• Plain text, structured JSON, or both
• Billing-safe behavior that writes only successful transcript results to the dataset

Use cases

• AI and LLM training datasets
• Content repurposing workflows
• SEO and keyword analysis
• Media and research pipelines

Input

{
  "videoUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" },
    { "url": "https://youtu.be/aqz-KE-bpKQ" }
  ],
  "outputFormat": "both",
  "lang": "en"
}

Input fields

• videoUrls required array of YouTube video URLs, with a maximum of 20 URLs per run
• outputFormat optional one of json, text, both
• lang optional language code such as en, tr, de, fr

Only direct video URLs are supported. Playlist and channel URLs are intentionally not supported in this version.

Output examples

outputFormat: "json"

{
  "inputUrl": "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "status": "ok",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": [
    {
      "text": "Never gonna give you up",
      "start": 0.32,
      "dur": 4.08,
      "lang": "en"
    }
  ]
}

outputFormat: "text"

{
  "inputUrl": "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "status": "ok",
  "language": "en",
  "transcriptText": "Never gonna give you up"
}

outputFormat: "both"

{
  "inputUrl": "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "status": "ok",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": [
    {
      "text": "Never gonna give you up",
      "start": 0.32,
      "dur": 4.08,
      "lang": "en"
    }
  ],
  "transcriptText": "Never gonna give you up"
}

Error handling

Failed items are collected in the run OUTPUT record and not pushed to the dataset. Hexa API maps upstream failures into product-specific error types such as:

• INVALID_URL
• TRANSCRIPT_NOT_FOUND
• UPSTREAM_RATE_LIMITED
• UPSTREAM_TIMEOUT
• UPSTREAM_UNAVAILABLE
• UPSTREAM_BAD_RESPONSE

FAQ

Does it need a YouTube API key?

No. Users only provide YouTube video URLs. Hexa API handles the transcript delivery layer behind the Actor.

Does it support playlists or channels?

No. This version supports only direct YouTube video URLs.

Are failed videos billed?

No. Only successful transcript results are pushed to the dataset.

Who is this built for?

Teams and developers who need reliable YouTube transcript access inside Apify without building and maintaining their own transcript service stack.

Built by Hexa API

Hexa API builds high-availability API products and delivery layers for production use cases. This Actor packages that service experience into an Apify-native workflow so users can run transcript jobs with a clean input schema and predictable outputs.