YouTube Transcripts — Captions from Videos & Channels

URL or channel in → transcript out. Pass YouTube watch/shorts/youtu.be links or channel links (@handle); get one JSON dataset row per video with the caption track (manual or auto-generated). No API key, no browser. Built for MCP agents, API clients, and scheduled pipelines.

Actor id	kaz_kakyo/youtube-transcripts
Minimal input	{ "youtubeUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…"] }
Channel input	{ "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@…"], "monitorId": "my-channels" } — new uploads only, on a schedule
Cost	$0.005 per video · $0.00005/run start
Output	Dataset rows with type: "transcript" or type: "error"

Call it (MCP / API / schedule)

MCP (agents)

{
  "actor": "kaz_kakyo/youtube-transcripts",
  "input": {
    "youtubeUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"]
  }
}

Optional extras agents usually want:

{
  "youtubeUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"],
  "languages": ["en"],
  "includeTimestamps": true,
  "includeSrt": true
}

After the run, read the default dataset. Every row has a type discriminator — filter on "transcript"; treat "error" as per-video failure. Missing captions, private/age-restricted/region-blocked videos, and bad URLs become error rows and the run still SUCCEEDS (including all-failed batches) so agent mistakes do not look like platform outages. The run fails only on a post-charge delivery failure (charged but could not write the dataset).

Transcribe a channel's new uploads

{
  "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium", "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC…"],
  "publishedAfter": "7 days",
  "monitorId": "science-channels-daily"
}

• Each channel contributes its most recent uploads, newest first — up to 15 (YouTube's public uploads feed). maxVideosPerChannel lowers that cap.
• publishedAfter takes a date (2026-10-01) or a rolling window (7 days, 24 hours, 2 weeks); older uploads are skipped and not charged.
• monitorId remembers every video delivered under that ID (in a key-value store named youtube-transcripts-monitors in your account) and skips it on later runs, free. Schedule the same input daily and you pay only for new uploads. A video whose captions are not ready yet (brand-new uploads can take a few hours) is retried on the next run.
• Use one monitorId per schedule: two runs overlapping on the same ID can both transcribe — and charge for — the same new upload. There is no cross-run exactly-once guarantee.
• Need older videos than the latest 15? Pass their URLs in youtubeUrls (e.g. from any channel scraper).

API / apify-client

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('kaz_kakyo/youtube-transcripts').call(
  { youtubeUrls: ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw'], includeTimestamps: true },
  { maxTotalChargeUsd: 1.0 }, // hard budget for this run
);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
const transcripts = items.filter((i) => i.type === 'transcript');

Same shape via REST: POST /v2/acts/kaz_kakyo~youtube-transcripts/runs with your token, then poll or attach a webhook.

Make it recurring (what sticky callers do)

1. Save a Task in Console with your fixed options (languages, includeTimestamps, includeSrt). Agents and cron jobs call the task id, not ad-hoc input.
2. Schedule the Task (hourly/daily) with channelUrls + a monitorId to transcribe each new upload once, or with a stable youtubeUrls list.
3. Webhook on SUCCEEDED to your endpoint / Zapier / Make — pull defaultDatasetId and process only type === "transcript" rows.
4. Cap spend on every automated run with maxTotalChargeUsd. When the cap hits, remaining videos become type: "error" skipped rows — no surprise bill, no silent free transcripts.
5. Chain: any YouTube search/channel scraper that outputs video URLs → this actor (for back catalogues beyond the latest 15 uploads). For speech-to-text of arbitrary media files (not YouTube captions), use kaz_kakyo/audio-transcriber with a direct file URL instead.

Long runs checkpoint finished video IDs — a platform migration resumes without re-billing completed videos.

Output contract

One dataset item per input URL or selected channel upload (plus skipped/invalid rows). Success shape:

{
  "type": "transcript",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "videoId": "jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "title": "Me at the zoo",
  "channel": "jawed",
  "channelId": "UC…",
  "durationSeconds": 19,
  "publishedAt": null,
  "language": "en",
  "languageName": "English",
  "autoGenerated": false,
  "languageFallback": false,
  "transcript": "Full caption text…",
  "availableLanguages": [{ "language": "en", "name": "English", "autoGenerated": false }],
  "segments": [{ "start": 0.0, "duration": 2.1, "text": "…" }],
  "srt": "1\n00:00:00,000 --> …"
}

Field	When present
transcript, videoId, title, channel, durationSeconds, language, autoGenerated	always on success
languageFallback	true when preferred languages did not match and another track was used
publishedAt	upload time (ISO) for channel uploads; null for youtubeUrls inputs
sourceChannel	the channelUrls entry a channel upload came from
availableLanguages	always on success
segments	includeTimestamps: true
srt	includeSrt: true
segmentsUrl / srtUrl	rare — oversized payloads spilled to the key-value store

Failure / skip row (never charged):

{ "type": "error", "url": "https://…", "videoId": "…", "error": "…", "errorCode": "captions_disabled" }

Channel and input errorCodes: invalid_channel_url, channel_not_found, channel_fetch_failed, already_transcribed (skipped for your monitorId), invalid_input (bad publishedAfter / monitorId — nothing is fetched).

Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML from Console or the dataset API.

Why this one

• Cheap captions path. $0.005 per video, the same price on every Apify plan. Near-zero compute — HTTP only, no browser, no Whisper.
• Channel monitoring built in. channelUrls + monitorId on a schedule = each new upload transcribed and billed once.
• Agent-safe. Bad/missing-caption URLs become type: "error" rows; the run still succeeds.
• Timestamps + SRT when you need them; plain transcript by default for RAG / MCP context packing.
• Language-aware. Prefer your languages list; manual captions beat auto-generated within a language.

Related actors

• TikTok Transcripts: TikTok video URLs to transcripts, using captions when present and speech-to-text otherwise.

Pricing

Event	Price	When
Transcript fetched	$0.005	Successful caption delivery (one charge per video)
Actor start	$0.00005	Per run

Error / skipped rows, channel lookups and videos already transcribed for your monitorId are never billed. Cap spend with maxTotalChargeUsd on the run or task.

Input rules agents must follow

• youtubeUrls and/or channelUrls — at least one is needed. Video URLs: watch / shorts / youtu.be / embed / live, or bare 11-char video IDs. Channels: youtube.com/@handle, /channel/UC…, /c/…, /user/… (max 100 per run). Max 500 videos per run in total; duplicates are collapsed by video ID.
• maxVideosPerChannel (1–15, default 15), publishedAfter (date or N hours|days|weeks), monitorId (skip videos already transcribed) — channel options above.
• languages — optional preferred BCP-47 codes in order (default prefers en, then any available).
• includeTimestamps — adds segments[] with { start, duration, text }.
• includeSrt — adds an .srt-format string.

Videos with captions disabled, private/deleted, age-restricted, or region-blocked return error rows. This actor fetches existing YouTube captions — it does not run speech-to-text. For arbitrary audio/video file URLs, use kaz_kakyo/audio-transcriber.

See the Input tab for the full schema. See the API tab for run/dataset endpoints.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. The actor uses the public Innertube player + timedtext endpoints.

Manual vs auto captions? Within a preferred language, manual tracks are chosen over auto-generated (autoGenerated: true when ASR was used).

Why did my URL fail? No public captions, or the video is private / age-gated / region-blocked. Check error / errorCode on the dataset row — the run status will still be SUCCEEDED.

How do I keep costs predictable on a schedule? Set maxTotalChargeUsd on the run/task, and use monitorId so each video is billed once.

Can I get a channel's whole back catalogue? Channel input covers the latest 15 uploads. For older videos, pass their URLs in youtubeUrls.

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If this saved you time, a Store review on the actor page helps a solo dev. Hit a problem? Open an issue.

Telemetry

Each run records one pseudonymous event: a salted hash of the caller account ID (never the raw ID), run origin (Console / API / MCP / …), and a timestamp. No inputs, results, or personal data — adoption measurement only.