YouTube Video Transcript Scraper: Captions, Subtitles, SRT
Pricing
from $2.50 / 1,000 transcripts
YouTube transcript extractor for any video, channel, playlist or search: the video transcript text and timed segments, each track labelled manual or auto-generated captions. YouTube subtitles as SRT, WebVTT, Markdown or chunks, with metadata, chapters, comments, translation. No login.
status
Optional
ok = the row carries a transcript (charged). Otherwise free, with reason saying why: no_captions, no_matching_track, unavailable, private, age_restricted, live_offline, unplayable, login_required, bot_wall, track_empty, too_long_for_speech_to_text, speech_to_text_failed, invalid_id, source_error, error.
reason
Optional
Why the row has no transcript, in words (null on ok rows).
video_id
Optional
The 11-character YouTube video id. Deduplicate on this.
video_url
Optional
The video's watch URL.
title
Optional
The video's title.
channel_name
Optional
The channel's name as YouTube shows it.
channel_id
Optional
The channel's id (UC…).
channel_url
Optional
The channel's URL.
channel_handle
Optional
The channel's @handle, when YouTube shows it on the video.
channel_subscribers
Optional
The channel's subscriber count as YouTube rounds it ("4.55M subscribers").
publish_date
Optional
The day the video was published (YYYY-MM-DD).
published_at
Optional
When the video was published, with the time and YouTube's UTC offset (ISO 8601).
duration_s
Optional
The video's length in seconds.
view_count
Optional
Views, exact.
like_count
Optional
Likes, exact.
category
Optional
YouTube's category for the video ("Music", "Education").
keywords
Optional
The video's tags as its uploader set them.
description
Optional
The video's description.
thumbnail_url
Optional
The largest thumbnail YouTube lists for the video.
is_live_content
Optional
True for a live stream or its replay.
language
Optional
The language code of the transcript on the row (en, de-DE, pt-BR).
language_name
Optional
The transcript's language in words ("German (Germany)").
requested_language
Optional
The first language you asked for (languages), so a row can be checked against it.
language_note
Optional
Set when the row's track is not exactly the one asked: which one came back instead, and why.
track_kind
Optional
manual (captions written by people), auto-generated (YouTube's speech recognition) or speech-to-text (our model transcribed the audio, transcribeMissing).
is_auto_generated
Optional
False only for manual captions.
transcript_source
Optional
Where the transcript comes from, in words: "YouTube captions (manual)", "YouTube captions (auto-generated)" or "speech-to-text (OpenAI whisper-1)".
segment_count
Optional
How many timed segments the transcript has (YouTube's caption events with text).
text
Optional
The whole transcript as one text: the segments in order, a line break inside a caption turned into a space.
word_count
Optional
Words in text.
char_count
Optional
Characters in text.
segments
Optional
The timed segments: start and duration in seconds (millisecond precision) and text exactly as YouTube serves it. Off with includeSegments: false.
srt
Optional
The transcript as SRT subtitles (outputFormats).
vtt
Optional
The transcript as WebVTT subtitles (outputFormats).
paragraphs
Optional
Paragraphs with start, end and text: a new one at a pause of 2 seconds, a chapter start, or past about 700 characters at a sentence end (outputFormats).
chunks
Optional
RAG chunks of about chunkSize characters with index, start, end, chapter and text, cut at caption boundaries and chapter starts (outputFormats).
markdown
Optional
The transcript in Markdown: the title, a heading per chapter and a paragraph per paragraph, each led by a link to that moment of the video (outputFormats).
chapters
Optional
The video's chapters: title, start, end (seconds) and a url that opens the video there.
tracks
Optional
Every caption track the video has: language, name, kind (manual or auto-generated), is_translatable.
translation_languages
Optional
The languages YouTube's player offers to translate the video's captions into (language, name). YouTube serves those translations to signed-in viewers only; translateTo is our machine translation instead.
other_tracks
Optional
With allTracks: every other track of the video, each with language, language_name, track_kind, is_auto_generated, transcript_source, segment_count, text and segments.
translation
Optional
With translateTo: the machine translation next to the original — language, language_name, source ("machine (OpenAI gpt-6-luna)"), model, status (complete, incomplete, failed, not_needed), source_language, source_chars, segment_count, missing_segments, text, segments (the original's count and timing), srt / vtt when asked, note, error.
speech_to_text_seconds
Optional
With transcribeMissing: the seconds of audio our model transcribed (the row's track_kind is speech-to-text).
files
Optional
With saveFiles: links to the files written to the run's storage, one per format (text, srt, …; translation_… for the translation).
notes
Optional
Anything the row could not carry in full, in words (a metadata call that failed, an incomplete translation).
source_type
Optional
What brought the video into the run: video, channel, playlist or search; file on the free row of a list-file link that gave no list.
source
Optional
The value you gave (the URL, id, handle or query) that brought the video into the run.
source_position
Optional
The video's place in your list, or in the channel, playlist or search it came from (1 = first).
scraped_at
Optional
When the row was read (UTC).
comments
Optional
With
maxComments: top-level comments withcomment_id,text,author,author_channel_id,is_creator,is_verified,published(as YouTube says it),like_count,reply_count.