YouTube Transcript Scraper — SRT, VTT, JSON & Plain Text with Whisper AI Fallback

Turn any YouTube video or Short into a clean transcript in one run. Every row carries the full text, timestamped segments, ready-made SRT and VTT subtitle files, and the video's core metadata (title, channel, views, duration, description). When a video has no captions at all, the optional Whisper AI fallback downloads the audio and transcribes it with speech-to-text — something caption-only scrapers simply return empty for.

How it works

✨ Why use this scraper?

• Four-source extraction ladder — official caption tracks first, then the DownSub subtitle service, then yt-dlp subtitle download, then Whisper AI speech-to-text. One source being blocked or missing doesn't kill your run.
• Whisper AI for caption-less videos — the differentiator: videos with no captions still come back transcribed (opt-in, billed as a separate premium event so you never pay it unknowingly).
• Every format in one row — plain text for LLM pipelines, timestamped JSON segments for analysis, SRT and VTT for subtitle workflows. No post-processing.
• Language selection with auto-translate — request en, de, es… and where the exact track is missing, YouTube's translated track is used when available.
• Metadata included free — title, channel, view count, duration, keywords, description and thumbnails ride along on every transcript row.
• Bulk-friendly — paste hundreds of URLs; failed videos are isolated and never billed.

🎯 Use cases

Who	What they do with it
AI & LLM builders	Feed clean plain-text transcripts into RAG pipelines, summarizers, and agents (MCP-friendly output).
Content & SEO teams	Repurpose videos into articles, show notes, and quote pulls; mine competitor channels for topics.
Researchers & analysts	Build searchable corpora from talks, interviews and news coverage, with timestamps intact.
Subtitle & localization teams	Get SRT/VTT straight from the source, plus translated tracks where YouTube offers them.
Media monitoring	Track what's being said about brands and people across YouTube at scale.

📥 Supported inputs

Input	Example
Standard video URLs	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Short links	https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
Shorts	https://www.youtube.com/shorts/{id}

Not supported: private, members-only or age-gated videos, and live streams still in progress. To transcribe a whole channel, list its videos with the YouTube Channel Videos scraper and feed the URLs here.

🔄 How a run works

1. Each URL is resolved to its video ID and fetched with browser-grade TLS.
2. The caption track in your requested language is located (auto-translate applied when needed).
3. If captions are missing or blocked, the ladder steps down: DownSub → yt-dlp subtitles → (opt-in) Whisper AI speech-to-text.
4. Segments are normalised to timestamped JSON and rendered to SRT and VTT.
5. One row per video is pushed — transcript, formats, and metadata together.

⚙️ Input parameters

Field	Type	Default	Notes
startUrls	array	—	Video/Shorts URLs, any standard form
language	string	default	Caption language code (en, de, …); default = the video's original track
whisperFallback	boolean	false	Whisper AI speech-to-text for caption-less videos — billed per transcribed video as a premium event
maxItems	integer	100	Hard cap on billed transcript rows
maxConcurrency	integer	10	Parallel video fetches
proxy	object	Automatic	Paid-plan runs use the actor's built-in premium residential pool automatically

📊 Output overview

One row per video. The transcript appears three ways — transcript (timestamped segments), transcript_only_text (plain text), and transcript_srt / transcript_vtt (ready-to-save subtitle files) — alongside the video's metadata. Rows where every source failed carry a transcriptError explaining why (and are still real video rows, with metadata).

📦 Output sample

Real trimmed row from a live run:

{
    "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
    "author": "Rick Astley",
    "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
    "lengthSeconds": "213",
    "viewCount": "1699540216",
    "transcript": [
        { "text": "[♪♪♪]", "startMs": "1360", "endMs": "3040", "startTimeText": "0:01" },
        { "text": "♪ We're no strangers to love ♪", "startMs": "18800", "endMs": "22140", "startTimeText": "0:18" }
    ],
    "transcript_only_text": "[♪♪♪] ♪ We're no strangers to love ♪ ♪ You know the rules and so do I ♪ …",
    "transcript_srt": "1\n00:00:01,360 --> 00:00:03,040\n[♪♪♪]\n…",
    "transcript_vtt": "WEBVTT\n\n00:00:01.360 --> 00:00:03.040\n[♪♪♪]\n…",
    "keywords": ["rick astley", "Never Gonna Give You Up", "nggyu"],
    "thumbnail": { "thumbnails": [{ "url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/…", "width": 168, "height": 94 }] }
}

🗂 Key output fields

Field	Meaning
transcript[]	Timestamped segments: text, startMs, endMs, startTimeText
transcript_only_text	The whole transcript as one plain string — LLM-ready
transcript_srt / transcript_vtt	Complete subtitle files as strings — save and use directly
transcriptSource	Which ladder step produced it (captions / downsub / yt-dlp / whisper)
videoId, title, author, channelId	Video identity
viewCount, lengthSeconds, keywords, shortDescription, thumbnail	Metadata that rides along free
transcriptError, transcriptSkipped	Present only when every source failed for a video

❓ FAQ

What happens with videos that have no captions? Without whisperFallback they return metadata plus a transcriptError. With whisperFallback: true, the audio is downloaded and transcribed by Whisper speech-to-text — billed as a separate premium event per video, only when it actually produces a transcript. Whisper handles videos up to 30 minutes long.

Which languages are supported? Any language YouTube has a caption track for. Set language to a code like de or es; when that exact track is missing, YouTube's auto-translated track is used where available.

Can I transcribe a whole channel or playlist? Feed video URLs in bulk. To harvest a channel's URLs first, use the YouTube Channel Videos scraper and pipe its output here. Native channel expansion is on the roadmap.

Do I need to configure proxies? No. Runs on a paid Apify plan go through the actor's built-in premium residential pool automatically — YouTube throttles datacenter IPs aggressively, and this keeps success rates high at volume with zero setup. Free-plan runs use Apify's automatic proxy, and the proxy input lets them supply their own.

Do failed videos cost me anything? No placeholder-row billing games: a video that produces no row bills nothing, and Whisper is only charged when it delivers text.

💬 Support

Found a bug or missing a field? Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab in Apify Console — issues are answered within 1–2 business days.

🛠 Additional services

Need scheduled transcript archives, a merged multi-platform transcript feed (YouTube + TikTok + Instagram + Loom), or delivery straight to your database? Custom builds and SLAs available — contact me through the actor page.

🔎 Explore more scrapers

Same developer, same stack: Video & Audio Transcriber (Whisper), Instagram Transcript Scraper, YouTube Comments, YouTube Search — and the full portfolio at memo23 on Apify Store.

🤖 For AI Agents & LLM Apps

Built for machine consumption: transcript_only_text drops straight into a context window; timestamped segments support citation and chaptering; stable field names across every row. Pair with the Video Transcripts MCP Server to expose transcripts as a tool in agent frameworks. Keep maxItems low per call for cost control; every row is self-contained.

---

⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by YouTube or Google LLC. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

The scraper accesses only publicly available video pages and caption data — no login, no age-gated, members-only or private content. Users are responsible for ensuring their use complies with YouTube's Terms of Service, copyright law as it applies to transcript content, applicable data-protection law (GDPR, CCPA, etc.), and any contractual obligations of their own organisation.

---

SEO Keywords

youtube transcript scraper, youtube transcript api, extract youtube transcript, youtube captions scraper, youtube subtitles downloader, srt from youtube, vtt from youtube, youtube video to text, youtube transcription tool, whisper youtube transcription, transcribe youtube videos without captions, youtube transcript for llm, youtube rag pipeline, bulk youtube transcripts, youtube caption extractor, video to text api, youtube shorts transcript, youtube transcript json, apify youtube transcript, pintostudio alternative, youtube-transcript-scraper alternative