YouTube Subtitles Scraper

YouTube Subtitles Scraper 🎬🧾

Fetch subtitles / caption tracks from YouTube videos and save clean, structured data directly to your Apify dataset. This actor processes a single YouTube video and returns all available subtitle tracks (languages) in the format you choose.

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📚 Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Key Features
3. When to Use This Actor
4. Input Parameters
5. Output Data
6. How to Use on Apify
7. Examples
8. Best Practices
9. FAQ
10. Tags

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🔎 Overview

The YouTube Subtitles Scraper actor makes it easy to:

• Fetch subtitle / caption tracks for a single YouTube video
• Choose the subtitle format that best fits your workflow (JSON / XML / text)
• Optionally filter tracks by language code (e.g. en, hi, es)
• Save one dataset item per subtitle track, including the language and direct subtitle URL

You can export the dataset to JSON, CSV or Excel and plug it into your own tools, dashboards, NLP/AI pipelines or automations.

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✨ Key Features

• Flexible input – accepts either a full YouTube URL or just the video ID
• Multiple subtitle formats – json3, srv1, srv2, srv3, ttml, vtt, srt
• Language filtering – only keep the languages you care about
• Clean, structured output – one row per subtitle track with consistent fields
• Clear error messages – failures are stored as simple, readable error items

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🎯 When to Use This Actor

Use this actor when you want to:

• Build a subtitle dataset for NLP, translation, or transcription projects
• Collect subtitles in multiple languages for the same YouTube video
• Export subtitles for caption editing tools or localization workflows
• Quickly check which subtitle languages are available for a given video

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⚙️ Input Parameters

Your input lives in the actor's INPUT store and is controlled by the Apify UI form.

Field	Type	Required	Description
videoId	string	Yes	YouTube video ID or full video URL. The actor automatically extracts the video ID. Must be a valid YouTube video link or ID.
format	string	No	Subtitle format. Default is srv1 (XML).
languageFilter	array of strings	No	Optional list of language codes to keep, e.g. ["en", "hi"]. If empty or omitted, all languages are returned.

Notes

• videoId accepts both:
  • Full URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKHKy89QaV0
  • Raw ID: WKHKy89QaV0
• format can be one of:
  • json3, srv1, srv2, srv3, ttml, vtt, srt

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📤 Output Data

Each successful dataset item represents one subtitle track for the requested video.

Field	Type	Description
videoId	string	YouTube video ID.
videoUrl	string	Full video URL (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...).
format	string	Subtitle format.
languageName	string	Human-readable language name, e.g. English.
languageCode	string	Language code, e.g. en.
isTranslatable	boolean	Whether this subtitle track can be auto-translated by YouTube.
subtitleUrl	string	Direct URL to the subtitle file in the requested format.
createdAt	string	ISO timestamp when the actor created this item.

If the actor cannot fetch subtitles for the video, you will instead see an error item like this:

Field	Type	Description
videoId	string	YouTube video ID.
videoUrl	string	Full video URL.
status	string	Always failed for error items.
error	string	Simple, human-readable error message.
httpStatus	number | null	HTTP status code returned by the subtitles service, if available.
createdAt	string	ISO timestamp when the error was recorded.

You can see the exact schema in the Output schema tab on Apify or by inspecting a sample dataset item after a run.

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🚀 How to Use on Apify

1. Open the actor on Apify.
2. Click Run.
3. In the input form:
   • Paste a YouTube video URL or ID into the videoId field.
   • (Optional) Choose your desired format (default is srv1).
   • (Optional) Add languageFilter codes if you only want specific languages.
4. Start the run.
5. When the run finishes, open the Dataset tab to see the subtitle tracks.
6. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel for further use.

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💡 Examples

Example 1 – Basic run with default format

{
  "videoId": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKHKy89QaV0"
}

Example 2 – Filter subtitles by language

{
  "videoId": "WKHKy89QaV0",
  "format": "vtt"
}

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✅ Best Practices

• Use public YouTube videos that are available worldwide where possible.
• Prefer full video URLs if you are unsure about the video ID format.
• Use languageFilter to keep only the languages you actually need and reduce dataset size.
• After the run finishes, export the dataset quickly if you plan to process subtitles in external tools.

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❓ FAQ

Q: Does this actor download and store subtitle files on Apify?
A: The actor stores links and metadata about subtitle tracks in the dataset. You can download subtitle files later using their URLs.

Q: Can I scrape multiple videos in one run?
A: This actor is designed for one video per run (one videoId). For multiple videos, create a workflow that runs the actor for each video ID.

Q: Which subtitle formats are supported?
A: Supported formats are: json3, srv1, srv2, srv3, ttml, vtt, srt.

Q: What happens if no subtitles are available?
A: If there are no subtitle tracks for the video, the actor will log this and may return an empty dataset (no subtitle items).

Q: Why do I see error items in the dataset?
A: Error items appear when the subtitle service cannot return data (for example, invalid video ID, unavailable video, or technical issues). Each error item contains a simple message in the error field.

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🏷️ Tags

youtube subtitles scraper, youtube subtitles api, actor youtube captions extractor, youtube transcript scraper, download youtube subtitles, youtube subtitles dataset, youtube transcript dataset, subtitle metadata scraper, caption tracks dataset, youtube subtitle downloader, youTube subtitles extension,

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🚀 Get Started Now

Ready to extract comprehensive YouTube video Subtitles?

1. 🎥 Enter video IDs (e.g., ["dX9CGRZwD-w", "N3IIruee3PE"])
2. ▶️ Click Start to run the actor
3. 📥 Download your data in JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML format
4. Click "Try for free" to test the actor

⭐ Star this actor if it helps you extract YouTube video Subtitles efficiently!

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Related Actors 🤝

Looking for more YouTube data? Check out these complementary actors:

• YouTube Video Downloader
• YouTube Comment Scraper
• YouTube Search Scraper
• YouTube Video Scraper

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Built with ❤️ using Apify Platform