txtts — Transcribe YouTube, X, TikTok & Podcasts

A real transcript of every video, captions or not. Paste YouTube links, podcast episodes or feeds, or links to audio and video files, and get back clean, readable transcripts. Each result is ready to copy, search or feed into your own tools.

What you can transcribe

• YouTube, X (Twitter) and TikTok videos: any public video. We transcribe what is actually said, so it works the same whether a video has captions or not.
• Podcasts: a single episode link, or a podcast feed (RSS). For a feed, choose how many of the newest episodes to transcribe.
• Audio and video links: direct links to files such as MP3, M4A, WAV or MP4.
• Your own files: upload them to your Apify storage and add the links under Files.

Up to 100 links per run. Videos and recordings can be up to 5 hours long (5 links and 30 minutes on a free Apify plan).

What you get

One result per link, with:

• text: the full transcript as plain, punctuated text
• title, durationSeconds and language
• srt (optional): subtitles you can load into a video player or editor
• segments (optional): the transcript split into timed pieces, as JSON
• summary (optional): a short summary, key points and chapters with start times
• Speaker labels (optional): who is talking, as "Speaker 1", "Speaker 2"… in the text and segments
• Any of 8 languages (optional): transcripts, summaries and subtitles in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Japanese or Chinese, whatever language is spoken, free
• status: done, or an error explaining what went wrong

Download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read them through the Apify API.

How to use it

1. Add your links under Links.
2. Optional: set the Language (two letters, such as en or es). Leave it empty and it is detected for you.
3. Optional: add Subtitles (.srt) or Timestamped segments (JSON) under Extra formats.
4. Optional: switch on Summary or Label speakers, or pick an Output language. With an output language set, switch on Also keep the original language to get the transcript in the spoken language too.
5. Click Start.

Example input:

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "https://feeds.npr.org/500005/podcast.xml"
  ],
  "outputFormats": ["srt"],
  "maxEpisodes": 1
}

Example result:

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "title": "Me at the zoo",
  "status": "done",
  "language": "en",
  "durationSeconds": 19,
  "text": "All right, so here we are, in front of the elephants…"
}

Pricing

You pay only for transcripts that finish. Links that fail, and recordings with no usable speech, are free. Time is counted per recording and rounded up to the next full minute, so a 19-second video counts as 1 minute.

If you set a maximum cost per run, txtts stops starting new links once it's reached and never delivers a result it couldn't charge for. The lowest maximum you can set is $0.05.

On a free Apify plan, each run transcribes up to 5 links (a podcast feed's episodes count one each), up to 30 minutes per recording. Anything over that is skipped and not charged. Paid Apify plans have no such limit: up to 100 links per run and 5 hours per recording.

What	Price
YouTube, X or TikTok video	$0.012 per started minute
Podcast episode or audio/video link	$0.008 per started minute
Summary, key points and chapters	$0.001 per started minute (at least $0.01)
Speaker labels	$0.002 per started minute, on top
Text to speech	$0.02 per started block of 1,000 characters
Starting a run	$0.00005 per run (Apify's standard start charge, per GB of memory above 1 GB)

Text to speech

Put text in Text to speech instead of links and you get back an audio file. Pick an Output language and your text is translated first, then read by a voice of that language. Add pauses with a spaced dash ( – ), three dots, a blank line, or an exact time like (2s).

Good to know

• Very long recordings may come back without a summary. You aren't charged for a summary you don't get.
• Private, members-only and age-restricted videos, and X posts that need a login, can't be transcribed. Instagram and Facebook links aren't supported. Live streams can be transcribed once they have ended.
• Most transcripts are ready in about a minute; long videos take a couple of minutes.
• Your audio and video files are deleted as soon as the transcript is done.