YouTube Transcript Scraper - Transcriber
Pricing
from $5.00 / 1,000 caption transcripts
Transcribe YouTube videos. Captions when available, OpenAI Whisper fallback (BYOK) for the rest. No YouTube account needed.
You can access the YouTube Transcript Scraper - Transcriber programmatically from your own applications by using the Apify API. You can also choose the language preference from below. To use the Apify API, you’ll need an Apify account and your API token, found in Integrations settings in Apify Console.
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Videos: any standard format (watch?v=, youtu.be, shorts, embed) or bare 11-character video IDs. Channels: /@handle, /channel/UC..., /c/name, /user/name (all expand the /videos tab only — Shorts and Streams are not enumerated in v0.3, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd). Playlists: /playlist?list=... (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4). Each URL is canonicalized + validated against a strict hostname and character allowlist before any subprocess call. Playlist order is playlist-creator-defined (NOT necessarily newest-first).", "items": { "type": "string" } }, "preferredLanguage": { "title": "Preferred caption language", "type": "string", "description": "BCP-47 language code (e.g. 'en', 'es', 'fr'). When the requested caption language isn't available, the actor falls through to Whisper.", "default": "en" }, "transcriptMethod": { "title": "Transcript method", "enum": [ "auto", "captions", "whisper" ], "type": "string", "description": "auto = captions first, fall through to Whisper. captions = captions only. whisper = Whisper only.", "default": "auto" }, "openaiApiKey": { "title": "OpenAI API key (optional)", "type": "string", "description": "Your OpenAI API key. Optional — only needed when a video has no captions in your preferred language and you want Whisper to transcribe it. With no key: captions still work; videos without captions are skipped with a clear reason. The key is never logged or stored. Required only when transcriptMethod='whisper'." }, "whisperModel": { "title": "Whisper model", "enum": [ "whisper-1" ], "type": "string", "description": "OpenAI Whisper model. Only whisper-1 supports verbose_json segment timestamps required by the JSON output format.", "default": "whisper-1" }, "outputFormat": { "title": "Output format", "enum": [ "text", "json" ], "type": "string", "description": "text = plain transcript. json = array of {start, end, text} segments.", "default": "text" }, "includeTimestamps": { "title": "Include timestamps in text output", "type": "boolean", "description": "When outputFormat=text, prefix each segment with [HH:MM:SS]. Has no effect on JSON output (timestamps always present there).", "default": false }, "maxDurationMinutes": { "title": "Max video duration (minutes)", "minimum": 1, "maximum": 300, "type": "integer", "description": "Skip videos longer than this. Default 18 is a conservative OpenAI-cost guardrail (~$0.11/video at Whisper's $0.006/min). Safe to raise up to 300 — audio above Whisper's 25 MB per-request limit is chunked via ffmpeg and re-stitched automatically.", "default": 18 }, "maxVideosPerChannel": { "title": "Max videos per channel/playlist", "minimum": 0, "maximum": 5000, "type": "integer", "description": "When the input contains channel or playlist URLs, this caps how many videos get pulled from each source. Channels return the newest N videos; playlists return the first N in creator-defined order. Default 200 covers most channels; raise for bulk dataset runs. Set 0 for unlimited (still gated by maxWhisperMinutesPerRun and the actor wall-clock timeout).", "default": 200 }, "maxWhisperMinutesPerRun": { "title": "Max Whisper minutes per run", "minimum": 0, "maximum": 10000, "type": "integer", "description": "Cap on total minutes of audio sent to Whisper. Bounds your OpenAI bill per run. Default raised to 240 in v0.3 to support bulk channel runs. 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