Youtube Transcript Scraper - Subtitles & Captions Extractor

The fastest YouTube transcript scraper on Apify. Extract video transcripts, subtitles, and closed captions from any YouTube video in 100+ languages. Bulk processing, no API key needed, high success rate.

✅ Works on ANY video — even ones with NO captions. Most tools fail when a video has no subtitles. This one automatically transcribes the audio with AI speech-to-text (Whisper) as a fallback, so you always get a transcript. Videos with captions stay fast; caption-less videos are transcribed from audio.

⚡ What this YouTube scraper does

This YouTube transcript extractor / subtitle downloader / caption scraper lets you:

• 📥 Download YouTube video transcripts in bulk
• 🌐 Extract subtitles in 100+ languages (Hindi, English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu and more)
• 🎬 Works with all YouTube URL formats: youtube.com/watch, youtu.be/, YouTube Shorts, YouTube embeds
• 📊 Bulk process hundreds of videos at once
• 🎙️ Audio transcription fallback — no captions? It transcribes the audio (Whisper AI speech-to-text) so you still get a transcript from ANY video
• 🚀 No API key required — just paste URLs and run
• 💰 One of the cheapest YouTube transcript API alternatives on Apify

🎯 Perfect for

• AI / ML training datasets — collect video transcript data for training language models, fine-tuning, RAG systems
• Content repurposing — convert YouTube videos to blog posts, articles, newsletters, social posts
• SEO & keyword research — analyze competitor YouTube content for keywords and topics
• Video summarization — feed transcripts into GPT, Claude, or Gemini for automatic summaries
• Closed captions download — save subtitles in structured format
• YouTube data mining — research, academic studies, sentiment analysis
• Language learning — get subtitles for learning new languages
• Accessibility — provide transcripts for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences
• Translation workflows — translate YouTube content to other languages
• Podcast transcription — many podcasts publish on YouTube first

🔑 Features

• ✅ Bulk YouTube transcript extraction — paste 100s of URLs at once
• ✅ 100+ languages supported — Hindi, English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and many more
• ✅ All YouTube URL formats — watch URLs, youtu.be short links, Shorts, embed URLs
• ✅ Auto-generated & manual subtitles — works with both types
• ✅ Timestamped transcripts — each line with start time and duration
• ✅ JSON output — clean structured data ready for AI processing
• ✅ No cookies / no login — works out of the box
• ✅ High success rate — reliable extraction method
• ✅ Cheap pricing — pay only for what you use, free plan friendly

📋 Input

Field	Type	Description
urls	Array of strings	List of YouTube video URLs. Supports watch, youtu.be, Shorts, embed URLs.
language	String	Preferred subtitle language code. Default: en. Examples: hi, es, fr, de, ja, ko, ar, pt, zh.

Example input

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw"
  ],
  "language": "en"
}

📤 Output (per video)

Every video returns the transcript in multiple ready-to-use formats (plain text, SRT, VTT, timestamped JSON) plus full video metadata — no extra calls needed:

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video)",
  "channel": "Rick Astley",
  "channel_id": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "duration_seconds": 213,
  "view_count": 1787946697,
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "is_auto_generated": false,
  "available_languages": ["en", "de-DE", "ja", "pt-BR", "es-419"],
  "description": "Video description text...",
  "tags": ["rick astley", "never gonna give you up"],
  "category": "Music",
  "publish_date": "2009-10-24T23:57:33-07:00",
  "language": "en",
  "line_count": 142,
  "word_count": 384,
  "transcript": "Full plain-text transcript here...",
  "transcript_translated": "Translated transcript (if translateTo is set)...",
  "translated_to": "hi",
  "srt": "1\n00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,500\nNever gonna give you up\n...",
  "vtt": "WEBVTT\n\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.500\nNever gonna give you up\n...",
  "lines": ["Line 1", "Line 2"],
  "data": [
    { "text": "Never gonna give you up", "start": 0.5, "dur": 2.1 }
  ]
}

🌐 Built-in translation (unique — free, no API key)

Set the optional translateTo input (e.g. hi, en, es, fr) and the actor returns the full transcript translated into that language in transcript_translated. Turn any video's captions into any of 100+ languages — no extra tool, no key.

Output fields

Field	Description
title, channel, channel_id	Video title & channel
duration_seconds, view_count, thumbnail	Video metadata
description, tags, category, publish_date	Full video details
available_languages	All caption languages on the video
is_auto_generated	Auto-captions vs human captions
transcript	Full plain text — ready for AI/LLM summarization
transcript_translated, translated_to	Transcript translated to your chosen language (free, no key)
srt	SubRip subtitle file (ready to use as .srt)
vtt	WebVTT subtitle file (ready to use as .vtt)
word_count, line_count	Counts
data	Timestamped segments (text, start, dur)

💡 Use cases & examples

1. AI training data collection

Scrape thousands of YouTube videos to build custom AI training datasets. Feed transcripts into OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, or local LLMs for fine-tuning and RAG.

2. Content repurposing workflow

Extract YouTube transcript → Send to GPT/Claude → Generate blog posts, Twitter threads, LinkedIn posts, newsletter content.

3. Competitor SEO research

Download YouTube transcripts from top-ranking videos in your niche. Analyze keywords, topics, and structure to improve your own content.

4. Podcast to blog pipeline

Many podcasters publish on YouTube. Extract podcast transcripts and turn them into searchable blog content for SEO.

5. Multilingual content

Get subtitles in multiple languages for the same video to power translation workflows.

6. Research & academia

Collect YouTube transcript data for linguistic research, sentiment analysis, and educational research.

❓ FAQ

Q: Does this work for all YouTube videos? A: Yes, any public YouTube video with available subtitles (manual or auto-generated).

Q: Do I need a Google or YouTube API key? A: No. This YouTube scraper works without any API key or OAuth.

Q: Can I download subtitles in SRT format? A: Output is JSON with timestamps — you can easily convert to SRT, VTT, or plain text.

Q: How many videos can I process at once? A: Hundreds in a single run. Bulk processing is supported.

Q: What languages are supported? A: 100+ languages including English, Hindi, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and many more.

Q: Can I use this for YouTube Shorts? A: Yes, YouTube Shorts are fully supported.

Q: How is this different from youtube-transcript-api Python library? A: This is a hosted Apify scraper — no Python setup, no IP blocks, no rate limiting issues. Just paste URLs and run.

Q: Is this a free YouTube transcript downloader? A: Apify free plan gives $5/month credits which covers thousands of transcript extractions.

🔖 Keywords

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📞 Support

Found a bug or have a feature request? Open an issue on Apify or contact the author.