Podcast Transcript Scraper: Episodes & Full Text Transcripts

Turn a list of podcast shows into a clean, structured dataset of episodes and their full transcripts: segmented, with timestamps and speaker labels where the feed provides them. Straight from the show's RSS feed, no login, no audio download, no ASR.

Perfect for content research, competitive podcast monitoring, transcript search indexes, and feeding LLM pipelines without paying for a separate transcription step when the show already ships one.

What you get

• 🔎 Search by show name, Apple Podcasts URL, or a direct RSS feed URL.
• 📝 Full transcript text plus timed segments (start, end, speaker, text) wherever the publisher exposes a Podcasting 2.0 <podcast:transcript> tag.
• 🎙️ Episode metadata: title, publish date, duration, audio URL, description, episode URL.
• 🚦 transcriptAvailable flag so you always know which episodes came with a transcript.
• 📄 Clean JSON / CSV / Excel export, ready for a spreadsheet or a pipeline.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.002 per episode returned, plus a small per-run start fee. You only pay for episodes you actually receive; no monthly subscription.

How it works

1. Each input entry (a show name, an Apple Podcasts URL, or a direct RSS URL) is resolved to the show's RSS feed via the free iTunes lookup API.
2. The feed is parsed for episodes: title, publish date, duration, audio URL, description, episode URL.
3. Where an episode exposes a Podcasting 2.0 <podcast:transcript> tag, the transcript file (SRT / WebVTT / JSON) is fetched and parsed into full text plus timed segments.

Input

Field	Type	Description
queries	string[]	Show names, Apple Podcasts URLs, or RSS feed URLs, one per show.
maxEpisodesPerShow	int	Most recent N episodes per show (default 10).
onlyWithTranscript	boolean	Skip episodes with no transcript (default false).
includeTranscriptText	boolean	Download + parse transcript text, else return only its URL (default true).

Example input

{
  "queries": ["Stuff You Should Know", "Darknet Diaries"],
  "maxEpisodesPerShow": 10
}

Output

One record per episode.

Field	Description
showName, episodeTitle	Show and episode titles.
publishDate, durationSeconds	Publish date and duration.
audioUrl	Direct audio file URL.
transcriptAvailable, transcriptFormat, transcriptUrl	Whether a transcript exists, its format and file URL.
transcript, transcriptSegments	Full transcript text and timed {start, end, speaker, text} lines.
description, episodeUrl, guid	Show notes, episode page URL and feed GUID.
feedUrl, scrapedAt	Source RSS feed and scrape time.

Example output

{
  "showName": "Stuff You Should Know",
  "episodeTitle": "How Ransomware Works",
  "publishDate": "2026-06-30T09:00:00.000Z",
  "durationSeconds": 3120,
  "audioUrl": "https://chtbl.com/track/12345/media.example.com/episode.mp3",
  "transcriptAvailable": true,
  "transcriptFormat": "srt",
  "transcriptUrl": "https://example.com/transcripts/episode-123.srt",
  "transcript": "Josh: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know...",
  "feedUrl": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/stuffyoushouldknow"
}

Coverage / limitations

• Transcripts come only from what the publisher puts in the RSS feed. Roughly a quarter of top shows do so today (all iHeart-network shows, and a growing set of others); coverage is expanding as the Podcasting 2.0 transcript tag spreads.
• Episodes with no feed transcript are still returned with metadata and audioUrl, flagged transcriptAvailable: false. This actor does not transcribe audio (no Whisper/ASR). That is out of scope for v1. For full coverage, feed the returned audioUrl into a dedicated speech-to-text actor.
• Spotify URLs are not supported: Spotify serves transcripts only to logged-in users. Pass the show name instead. It resolves to the same underlying RSS feed.

FAQ

Do I need an API key or podcast platform account? No. Just provide a show name or URL.

Which shows have transcripts? Any show that publishes a Podcasting 2.0 <podcast:transcript> tag in its RSS feed, currently around a quarter of top shows, growing.

Is this legal? The actor collects only publicly available RSS feed data. You are responsible for complying with each show's terms and applicable law in your use of the data.