YouTube Video Transcript: Full Text, Timestamps, SRT

Paste YouTube video links and get each video's transcript: the full text, ready for AI and LLM pipelines, timestamped segments, and SRT or WebVTT subtitles if you want them, with the video's details (title, channel, views, likes, duration). No YouTube account, no API key. Export as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it through the Apify API.

• One link or thousands: watch links, youtu.be links, Shorts, live replays and embeds, or plain video IDs, up to 20,000 per run.
• The language you want: list your preferred languages; otherwise you get the video's original language, not a dubbed track. Every record lists the caption tracks the video has.
• A free record that says why when a video has no transcript (no captions, private, live still running). You pay only for transcripts delivered.

$5 per 1,000 transcripts, the same on every Apify plan, plus a start fee of $0.005 per run at the default memory.

Quick start

1. Paste one video link per line into Videos.
2. Click Start.
3. Read the transcripts in the run's Output tab, or export them as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Through the API:

{
  "urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jPQjjsBbIc", "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QyVlUmluLhs"],
  "languages": ["en"],
  "transcriptFormat": "text",
  "includeSrt": true
}

Like any Apify Actor, it can be scheduled, connected to webhooks, Make, Zapier, n8n, or called by AI agents through Apify's MCP server. Channel and playlist links work here too; to read whole channels, playlists or YouTube searches with their own settings, the YouTube Transcript Scraper has them.

Output

One record per video. A transcript (status: "ok"), shortened here:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "videoId": "8jPQjjsBbIc",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jPQjjsBbIc",
  "title": "How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed | Daniel Levitin | TED",
  "channel": { "name": "TED", "handle": "@TED", "subscriberCount": 27900000 },
  "publishedAt": "2015-11-23T16:58:55Z",
  "durationSeconds": 740,
  "viewCount": 20051236,
  "likeCount": 268984,
  "language": "en",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "transcript": "A few years ago, I broke into my own house. I had just driven home, it was around midnight in the dead of Montreal winter, …",
  "segments": [
    { "start": 13.24, "end": 15.8, "duration": 2.56, "text": "A few years ago, I broke into my own house." },
    { "start": 16.88, "end": 18.096, "duration": 1.216, "text": "I had just driven home," }
  ],
  "wordCount": 2232,
  "billedTranscripts": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-07T19:03:48.620Z"
}

A video without captions comes back as a free missing record with the reason (missingReason) and the tracks it does have (availableLanguages).

What we measured

On the Apify platform on 9 October 2026, at the default memory (512 MB):

• 62 videos (a channel, searches in three languages, a Short, a video without captions): 57 transcripts and 5 free missing records with the reason, in 77 seconds.
• 12 podcast episodes of up to 5 h 16 min each, with SRT and VTT: 12 of 12 in 89 seconds.
• One video runs in about 4 seconds.
• Lectures dubbed by YouTube's AI into 11 to 19 languages came back in their original language.

Pricing

$5 per 1,000 transcripts ($0.005 each), plus a start fee of $0.005 per GB of memory per run (1 GB minimum: $0.005 at the default 512 MB). A video over 10 hours counts as one transcript per 10 hours started. Videos without captions, errors and duplicates are free; platform usage is included.

Run (default memory)	Price
1 video	$0.010
100 videos, 8 of them without captions	$0.465
1,000 transcripts	$5.005

Your maximum charge per run is never exceeded, and maxItems caps the charged transcripts. Apify's free plan includes $5 of usage a month, with no credit card required.

Limits

• No captions, no transcript. This Actor reads YouTube's captions; it does not transcribe audio. In a sample of 150 varied videos, 19% had no captions at all (silent Shorts, live streams, music): they come back as free records.
• Automatic captions are what YouTube generates: punctuation is often sparse and speakers are not named.
• Age-restricted, members-only and paid videos need a signed-in account; we do not use accounts.
• Live streams have no transcript until they end.
• For music videos, YouTube's automatic captions transcribe the lyrics; Skip music videos leaves them out.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. Leave the Connection setting on its default (automatic): it is included in the price.

Is it legal? It reads the captions YouTube shows to any visitor who is not signed in. Transcripts reproduce what people say, which may be protected by copyright and may contain personal data: your use must comply with the laws and terms that apply to you, including the GDPR in Europe.

Why is a video "missing" when I can see captions on YouTube? Check availableLanguages and missingReason: the captions may be only in languages you did not list. If not, open an issue with the URL and the run ID.

Does the Actor send anything to Quarra? Only when a run fails or runs out of time: the Actor, its build, the error type, the line of our code where it happened, and the memory and time the run was given, so we can fix it fast. Never your input, your results, your account or the run ID.

Related tools from Quarra

• YouTube Transcript Scraper: channels, playlists, searches and monitoring of new videos.
• TikTok Transcript Scraper and Instagram Transcript Scraper: speech to text for short videos.