YouTube Transcript Scraper & API: Captions, Subtitles, Shorts
Pricing
from $5.00 / 1,000 transcripts
Bulk YouTube transcripts from videos, Shorts, channels, playlists and searches, in the language spoken. Text with timestamps, SRT and VTT, chapters, exact comment count and subscribers, and a watch mode that returns only new videos. Videos without captions are not charged.
status
Required
ok: transcript delivered (charged). missing: the video exists but has no captions you can get (no captions, none in your languages, live or upcoming), free. error: the video or input could not be read (private, unavailable, age-restricted, unknown channel, blocked), free.
videoId
Optional
11-character YouTube video ID.
url
Optional
Canonical video URL (youtube.com/shorts/… for Shorts).
title
Optional
Video title.
channel
Optional
Channel: id (UC…), name, handle (@name), URL, subscriberCount (rounded as YouTube shows it, such as 27.9M; null if the channel hides it, if the video's page does not show it, as for videos uploaded by a VEVO channel, or if the page could not be read) and thumbnailUrl (its avatar, 800 px).
publishedAt
Optional
Publication date and time, ISO 8601 UTC.
durationSeconds
Optional
Length in seconds.
viewCount
Optional
Views when scraped.
likeCount
Optional
Likes when scraped (null if hidden).
commentCount
Optional
Exact number of comments when scraped; null if comments are turned off or the video's page could not be read (rare; the transcript is delivered as usual).
thumbnailUrl
Optional
The video's thumbnail, in the largest size YouTube has (maxresdefault.jpg when it exists, otherwise hqdefault.jpg).
category
Optional
YouTube category (Education, Science & Technology…).
isShort
Optional
True for a YouTube Short.
isLive
Optional
True for a live stream or a past live stream.
isLiveNow
Optional
True while the stream is live (no transcript until it ends).
isUnlisted
Optional
True for an unlisted video.
isFamilySafe
Optional
YouTube's family-safe flag.
originalLanguage
Optional
Language of the video's original audio track as YouTube marks it (en-US…), when YouTube gives it; the transcript is in this language unless you asked for another one.
language
Optional
Language code of the transcript returned (en, fr, pt-BR…).
languageName
Optional
Name of the track as YouTube shows it (English, English (auto-generated)…).
isAutoGenerated
Optional
True if the transcript comes from YouTube's automatic captions, false if written by the creator.
requestedLanguageFound
Optional
With preferred languages: true if one of them was found, false if the spoken language was returned instead. Null without preferred languages.
availableLanguages
Optional
Every caption track of the video: languageCode, name, isAutoGenerated, and isAutoDubbed for tracks of YouTube's AI dubbing (machine translations, never returned).
chapters
Optional
Chapters declared in the description (title, start, end in seconds), with YouTube's rules; null when the video has none.
transcript
Optional
The whole transcript as one string.
segments
Optional
Timestamped lines: start, end and duration in seconds, text. Auto-generated lines are trimmed so they do not overlap.
segmentCount
Optional
Number of segments.
wordCount
Optional
Words in the transcript (split on spaces; for Chinese, Japanese or Thai use characterCount).
billedTranscripts
Optional
Transcripts charged for this row: 1, or one per 10 hours started for a video over 10 hours (a 24-hour video counts 3; when YouTube gives no duration, the length of its captions counts); 0 for a free re-delivery.
characterCount
Optional
Characters in the transcript.
srt
Optional
With Add SRT subtitles: the transcript as an .srt file.
vtt
Optional
With Add WebVTT subtitles: the transcript as a .vtt file.
description
Optional
With Add description: the full video description.
keywords
Optional
With Add description: the video's tags.
missingReason
Optional
For status missing: why there is no transcript (no captions on this video, none in your languages with the list available, live stream in progress or not started, past live stream without recording, captions with only sound tags).
errorCode
Optional
For status error: private_video, video_unavailable, age_restricted, members_only, geo_restricted, paid_video, login_required, content_check, unplayable, channel_not_found, channel_empty, no_live_now, playlist_not_found, no_results, invalid_url, bad_input, watch_busy, captions_too_large, long_video_over_budget, run_cost_limit, blocked, network, site_changed, listing_failed, unexpected. See the README for each code.
error
Optional
For status error: the reason in plain English.
retryable
Optional
For status error: true if retrying later may work (blocked, network), false if not (private, deleted).
warning
Optional
Rare: something the record could not include, said plainly (for example: YouTube did not return the publication date and category of this video).
input
Optional
The input line that produced this record (video URL, @channel, playlist, search query).
inputType
Optional
video, channel, playlist, search, live (a channel's /live link), input or unknown.
position
Optional
Rank of the video in its channel, playlist or search (1 = first; newest first for channels). Records are written as soon as each video is done, so sort by input and position to get the source's order.
scrapedAt
Optional
When the record was produced, ISO 8601 UTC.
truncatedFields
Optional
Rare: fields emptied because the record exceeded the dataset's 9 MB limit (vtt, srt, then segments; the text is always kept).
commentsDisabled
Optional
True if comments are turned off on the video (videos made for kids, for example); null when it could not be told.