YouTube Transcript Scraper — Subtitles, Captions & SRT in Bulk

Get the transcript of any YouTube video — one video, a playlist, or an entire channel — as plain text, timestamped JSON, clean paragraphs, SRT or VTT.

No API key. No YouTube Data API quota. No browser. And you are only charged for transcripts that are actually delivered — videos without captions cost you nothing.

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What you get

Sources	Video URLs, Shorts URLs, playlist URLs, channel URLs (@handle, /channel/UC...), or bare video IDs
Formats	Plain text · timestamped segments (JSON) · [mm:ss] readable text · clean paragraphs · SRT · VTT
Languages	100+ — English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Hindi, Arabic, Swedish, Japanese, Korean and more
Captions	Human-written subtitles preferred automatically, with auto-generated (ASR) fallback
Metadata	Title, channel, duration, view count, description, keywords, thumbnail
Speed	Direct API access, no headless browser — typically under a second per video

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Why this scraper

Most YouTube transcript tools fail on a chunk of videos and still bill you for the attempt. This one is built around the two things people actually complain about:

1. It finds transcripts other scrapers miss. YouTube throttles caption access differently per client, so this actor tries the Android, Web and iOS endpoints in turn before giving up. A video that returns nothing on one client usually returns a full transcript on another.

2. You only pay for results. If a video genuinely has no captions, you get a clear reason in the error field and no charge. Compare that with per-run or per-attempt pricing elsewhere.

Plus the practical things: playlists and channels expand on their own, five output formats come free in the same run, and every failure explains itself in plain English instead of returning an empty row.

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How to use it

1. Click Try for free.
2. Paste one or more YouTube URLs into YouTube URLs. A playlist or channel URL works just as well as a single video.
3. Pick your transcript language (default en) and tick any extra output formats you want.
4. Click Start, then download results as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML — or pull them from the API.

Input example

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" },
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" },
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium" }
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "maxVideos": 50,
  "includeSegments": true,
  "includeParagraphs": true,
  "includeSrt": true
}

Output example

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Never Gonna Give You Up",
  "channelName": "Rick Astley",
  "durationSeconds": 213,
  "viewCount": 1543829104,
  "language": "en",
  "languageName": "English",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "availableLanguages": ["en", "es", "de", "fr", "pt"],
  "transcript": "We're no strangers to love, you know the rules and so do I...",
  "wordCount": 412,
  "segments": [
    { "start": 18.64, "duration": 3.12, "end": 21.76, "text": "We're no strangers to love" }
  ],
  "transcriptFound": true,
  "error": null
}

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What people use it for

• AI and RAG pipelines — feed video knowledge into ChatGPT, Claude, LangChain, LlamaIndex or a vector database. The clean paragraphs output is built for chunking.
• Summarising videos at scale — turn a 2-hour podcast or conference talk into text an LLM can digest.
• Repurposing content — turn videos into blog posts, newsletters, LinkedIn posts and social clips.
• SEO and keyword research — mine what competitors actually say on camera, not just their titles and tags.
• Subtitles and translation — export SRT or VTT to edit, translate, or re-upload.
• Research and analysis — build a searchable corpus from a channel, course or lecture series.
• Accessibility — produce readable text versions of video content.

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Pricing

Pay per transcript delivered. Platform usage is included — there are no separate compute charges to work out, and no monthly rental.

A video with no captions available returns a clear error and is not charged.

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Integrations

Runs anywhere Apify runs: API, JavaScript SDK, Python SDK, MCP server, n8n, Make, Zapier, LangChain, or on a schedule. Every run's output is available as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML and RSS.

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FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. This actor does not use the YouTube Data API, so there is no key to manage and no daily quota to run out of.

Can it transcribe a whole channel or playlist? Yes. Paste the playlist or channel URL and it expands automatically, up to your Maximum videos limit.

What if a video has no subtitles? You get a row with transcriptFound: false and a plain-English reason in error — and you are not charged for it. This actor reads existing captions; it does not run speech-to-text on audio that has none.

Does it work with auto-generated captions? Yes. Human-written captions are preferred when both exist; auto-generated ones are used otherwise. Set Prefer auto-generated captions to flip that.

Which languages are supported? Any language the video has captions in — over 100. Set the language code and the actor falls back to the closest available match.

Can I get SRT files for a video editor? Yes. Tick SRT subtitle file (or WebVTT) and the subtitle content is included in each result, ready to save as .srt or .vtt.

Does it work with YouTube Shorts? Yes — Shorts URLs are handled exactly like normal video URLs.

Is scraping YouTube transcripts legal? This actor accesses publicly available caption data. You are responsible for how you use the output, including copyright and YouTube's Terms of Service. Use it for research, analysis and content you have the right to work with.

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Support

Found a video that should work but doesn't? Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab with the URL and it will be looked at. Feature requests are welcome — most of this actor's options started as user requests.

If this saved you time, a ⭐ review genuinely helps other people find it.