YouTube Channel Transcripts — Bulk Extractor

Extract full transcripts from any YouTube channel's videos in bulk. Provide a channel handle, choose how many videos to process and how to sort them, and get back complete transcript text for each video — ready for analysis, content repurposing, or building datasets.

What is YouTube Channel Transcripts?

YouTube Channel Transcripts lets you extract the spoken content from a YouTube creator's videos at scale. Instead of manually opening each video and copying subtitles, this actor fetches transcripts for up to 20 videos from any public channel in a single run. It supports multiple languages and can return timestamped segments for precise time-based analysis.

What can this actor do?

• Bulk extraction — Fetch transcripts for up to 20 videos from any YouTube channel in one run
• Sort control — Choose which videos to transcribe by sorting by popularity (most views), newest uploads, or oldest uploads
• Multi-language support — Request transcripts in a specific language with automatic fallback to whatever is available
• Timestamped segments — Optionally include granular timestamped segments alongside the full transcript text
• Partial success handling — If some videos lack transcripts (disabled captions, live streams, etc.), the actor still returns results for the videos that succeeded, reporting how many failed
• Rich metadata — Each transcript includes the video title, URL, video ID, view count, publish date, word count, and transcript source (auto-generated or manual)

What data can you extract?

Field	Description
title	Video title
url	Full YouTube video URL
video_id	YouTube video ID
full_text	Complete transcript as plain text
transcript	Timestamped segments (when includeSegments is enabled)
language	Transcript language code
source	Transcript source (auto-generated, manual, etc.)
view_count	Number of views on the video
published_text	Human-readable publish date
word_count	Total word count of the transcript
error	Error message if transcript extraction failed for this video

How to use

1. Enter the YouTube channel handle (e.g. @mkbhd)
2. Set the video limit (default 5, max 20)
3. Choose how to sort videos — popular, newest, or oldest
4. Optionally set a language preference and enable timestamped segments
5. Run the actor
6. Download results as JSON, CSV, or Excel

Input example

{
  "handle": "@mkbhd",
  "videoLimit": 10,
  "sortBy": "newest",
  "language": "en",
  "includeSegments": false
}

Output example

{
  "title": "The Best Smartphones of 2025!",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123",
  "video_id": "abc123",
  "full_text": "Hey guys, MKBHD here. Today we're going to talk about the best smartphones...",
  "language": "en",
  "source": "auto-generated",
  "view_count": 5200000,
  "published_text": "2 weeks ago",
  "word_count": 3450,
  "error": null
}

Use cases

• Content strategy — Analyze what topics a competitor or industry leader covers most frequently across their video catalog
• Competitor analysis — Extract and compare messaging, product mentions, and talking points across multiple channels
• Building training data — Collect large volumes of spoken-word text for fine-tuning language models or building search indices
• SEO research — Discover keywords and phrases that top-performing videos naturally use in their spoken content
• Content repurposing — Convert video content into blog posts, social media threads, or newsletter material

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• Actor start: Small fee per run
• Per transcript: Fee for each video transcript returned

Platform usage costs are included — you only pay the per-event fees.

FAQ

What if a video doesn't have captions? Videos without any captions (auto-generated or manual) will be skipped. The actor reports how many transcripts failed so you know the coverage.

Does it work with auto-generated captions? Yes. Most YouTube videos have auto-generated captions which the actor can extract. The source field tells you whether captions were auto-generated or manually added.

Can I get transcripts in other languages? Set the language field to your preferred language code (e.g. es for Spanish, fr for French). If a transcript in that language isn't available, the actor falls back to whatever language is available.

What's the difference between full_text and transcript segments? full_text is the complete transcript as a single string. When includeSegments is enabled, you also get the transcript array with individual segments including start times and durations — useful for building chapter markers or syncing text to video.