# YouTube Channel Transcripts - Whole Channel or Playlist to Text (`leekung125/youtube-channel-transcripts`) Actor

Every video of a YouTube channel or playlist with title, views, duration, date and the full transcript, one row per video. Incremental (remembers delivered videos), language fallback, translation, no browser, charged only per transcript delivered.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/leekung125/youtube-channel-transcripts.md
- **Developed by:** [Lee Kung](https://apify.com/leekung125) (community)
- **Categories:** Videos, AI
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$5.00 / 1,000 transcripts

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## YouTube Channel Transcripts — every video of a channel or playlist, with metadata and transcript

Give it a **channel** (`@handle`, channel URL or id) or a **playlist**, and get **one row per video** with
title, views, duration, publish date **and the full transcript** (plus optional timestamped segments).
Built for people who feed whole channels into notes, search, LLMs and research, not one video at a time.

- **Channel in, corpus out.** Lists the newest N videos (up to 5,000), filters by views and duration, then
  fetches transcripts with preferred-language and auto-caption fallback, optional translation.
- **Incremental by default.** Videos already delivered for a channel are remembered and skipped next run,
  so a scheduled run only pays for new uploads.
- **Charged per transcript delivered.** Listing is free; videos without captions are free rows with a status.
- **No browser.** Listing via a lightweight extractor, transcripts over YouTube's caption endpoints,
  residential proxy rotation when YouTube blocks a session; a fixed number of retries, never an endless loop.

Single videos? Use the companion [YouTube Transcript Scraper](https://apify.com/leekung125/youtube-transcript-scraper).

### Output

| `type` | fields |
|---|---|
| `source` (free) | `channel`, `channel_id`, `channel_url`, `listed`, `picked`, `status` |
| `video` | `video_id`, `url`, `title`, `view_count`, `duration_seconds`, `published_at`, `status`, `language`, `source_language`, `is_generated`, `word_count`, `segment_count`, `text`, `segments[]` (optional), `error` |

`status` is `ok`, `no_transcript`, `captions_disabled`, `unavailable`, `blocked` or `error`. Only `ok` rows are charged.

### Input

| field | default | notes |
|---|---|---|
| `sources` | — | `@handle`, `https://www.youtube.com/@handle`, `/channel/UC…`, `/playlist?list=PL…` |
| `maxVideosPerSource` | `50` | newest first, up to 5,000 |
| `minViews`, `minDurationSeconds`, `maxDurationSeconds` | `0` | filters; e.g. `maxDurationSeconds: 60` = Shorts only, `minDurationSeconds: 61` = no Shorts |
| `skipAlreadyDone` | `true` | remember delivered video ids per source; turn off to re-fetch |
| `languages` | `["en"]` | preference order |
| `allowAutoGenerated` | `true` | fall back to automatic captions |
| `translateTo` | `""` | e.g. `en` |
| `includeSegments` | `false` | add timestamped lines (larger rows) |
| `concurrency` / `maxRetries` | `5` / `4` | |
| `proxyConfiguration` | Apify residential | recommended; datacenter IPs get blocked by YouTube |

Minimal input:

```json
{ "sources": ["@Apify"], "maxVideosPerSource": 20 }
```

### Use cases

Build a searchable archive of a creator's teaching · train or ground an assistant on a channel · monitor a
competitor's channel and read what they said this week · quote-mining across a podcast's back catalogue ·
subtitles corpus for translation · research on how topics evolve over a channel's history.

### Limits and honesty notes

- Transcripts are what YouTube provides (uploaded captions when present, otherwise automatic captions;
  `is_generated` says which). Members-only, private and live-without-captions videos return no transcript.
- Public data only; no login; no personal data.
- Very large channels take minutes, not seconds; the incremental memo keeps repeat runs cheap.

### Support

Open an issue on the Issues tab. Every run writes a `SUMMARY` record with listed, delivered, free and skipped counts.

# Actor input Schema

## `sources` (type: `array`):

Channels, @handles, channel ids, playlists - or a search, written as "search: your query". A search returns the top results for that query, with transcripts, obeying the same per-source limit as everything else.

## `maxVideosPerSource` (type: `integer`):

Newest first.

## `minViews` (type: `integer`):

Skip videos with fewer views. 0 = no filter.

## `minDurationSeconds` (type: `integer`):

e.g. 61 to skip Shorts. 0 = no filter.

## `maxDurationSeconds` (type: `integer`):

e.g. 60 for Shorts only. 0 = no filter.

## `skipAlreadyDone` (type: `boolean`):

Remembers delivered video ids per source, so scheduled runs only pay for new uploads.

## `languages` (type: `array`):

Language codes in order of preference.

## `allowAutoGenerated` (type: `boolean`):

If no manually created transcript exists in your languages, use YouTube's automatic captions.

## `translateTo` (type: `string`):

Optional language code.

## `includeSegments` (type: `boolean`):

Adds a segments array to every row (larger output).

## `concurrency` (type: `integer`):

Videos processed in parallel (1-20).

## `maxRetries` (type: `integer`):

Fresh proxy sessions to try when YouTube blocks a request; a video that fails every attempt is reported as blocked and not charged.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

YouTube blocks datacenter IPs for transcripts; Apify residential proxies recommended.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "sources": [
    "@Apify",
    "search: cold plunge recovery"
  ],
  "maxVideosPerSource": 50,
  "minViews": 0,
  "minDurationSeconds": 0,
  "maxDurationSeconds": 0,
  "skipAlreadyDone": true,
  "languages": [
    "en"
  ],
  "allowAutoGenerated": true,
  "translateTo": "",
  "includeSegments": false,
  "concurrency": 5,
  "maxRetries": 4,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ]
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `dataset` (type: `string`):

No description

## `summary` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "sources": [
        "@Apify",
        "search: cold plunge recovery"
    ],
    "languages": [
        "en"
    ],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": [
            "RESIDENTIAL"
        ]
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("leekung125/youtube-channel-transcripts").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "sources": [
        "@Apify",
        "search: cold plunge recovery",
    ],
    "languages": ["en"],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": True,
        "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("leekung125/youtube-channel-transcripts").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "sources": [
    "@Apify",
    "search: cold plunge recovery"
  ],
  "languages": [
    "en"
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ]
  }
}' |
apify call leekung125/youtube-channel-transcripts --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,leekung125/youtube-channel-transcripts"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/iNennn92EErG7YKWM/builds/eQAoNCp8A3SPZqsHL/openapi.json