YouTube Transcript Extractor + AI Moment Finder

Current status: transcript text is not retrieved. YouTube now serves caption text only to its own apps, or to browsers that hold a proof-of-origin token. This Actor does not imitate YouTube's apps and does not generate such tokens, so it cannot download caption text at the moment. For each video it reports the basic details, which caption languages exist and a status explaining why no transcript was returned. These rows are not charged.

This YouTube transcript extractor checks a list of video, playlist or channel links for available captions. When a transcript is available, an AI moment finder can point at clip-worthy moments, product and brand mentions, claims and statistics, audience questions, calls to action or sponsor segments. Each match comes as a short quote with start and end time and a link that opens the video at that second. Quotes are always copied from the transcript lines, never written by the AI.

Not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by YouTube or Google. YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC.

Who this is for

• Clip editors and social media teams who want to know which part of a long video is worth a closer look.
• Brand and sponsorship teams checking where a product is mentioned.
• Researchers and fact checkers who want claims with a timestamp to verify them in the video.
• Anyone who needs to know which caption languages a video offers.

What you get

Field	What it contains
videoId, url, title, channel, durationSeconds, thumbnail	Basic video details
availableLanguages	Caption languages the video offers
captionLanguage, captionAutoGenerated	The caption track that matches your language choice, and whether YouTube generated it
status	transcript_unavailable, no_captions, blocked (YouTube showed a bot check; skipped, not charged), unavailable or error
moments	When a transcript is available: for each option you picked, presence and a list of moments (startTime, endTime, link, quote, probability, relevance)
transcript	Only when a transcript is available and Include transcript lines is on (off by default)
error	Why no transcript or analysis was returned (these rows are free)

The "find" menu

Option	What it looks for
Clip-worthy moments	Self-contained passages that are surprising, funny, emotional, a strong opinion or a memorable insight
Product and brand mentions	Lines that name a product, brand, company, app or tool
Claims and statistics	Factual claims backed by a number, percentage, study or research result
Questions from the audience	Questions from viewers, live chat, comments or listeners being read out or answered
Calls to action	Asks to subscribe, like, comment, follow, click a link, sign up, buy or use a code
Sponsor segments	Paid sponsor reads and ads inside the video

How to run it

1. Add one or more links under YouTube URLs: youtube.com/watch?v=..., youtu.be/..., Shorts, live replays, playlist links or channel links like youtube.com/@handle.
2. For playlists and channels, set Max videos per playlist or channel (up to 50, newest first). A run handles at most 50 videos.
3. Pick what to look for under Moments to find.
4. Click Start.

Example output

{
  "videoId": "UF8uR6Z6KLc",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc",
  "title": "Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address",
  "channel": "Stanford",
  "durationSeconds": 904,
  "availableLanguages": ["ar", "en", "es", "it", "ja"],
  "captionLanguage": "en",
  "captionAutoGenerated": false,
  "status": "transcript_unavailable",
  "error": "Transcript not retrieved: YouTube only serves caption text to its own apps or to clients with a proof-of-origin token. ..."
}

How it reads YouTube

• It reads only the public watch, playlist and channel pages, with a user agent that names this Actor.
• It does not request paths that YouTube's robots.txt disallows, does not imitate YouTube's apps, does not use cookies, does not log in and does not use proxies.
• It pauses between requests and handles at most 50 videos per run.

Pricing

Pay per event. You pay only for videos that return a transcript, and for each moment analysis that runs. Rows without a transcript (currently all rows) are not charged. The current prices are shown on the Pricing tab.

FAQ

Why do I get no transcript? See the status note at the top. The Actor will not imitate YouTube's apps or work around YouTube's access checks to get caption text.

Can the AI invent quotes? No. The AI only picks line numbers from a transcript. The quote text is copied from those lines by code.

What about copyright? Transcripts are the creator's content. Moments are short quotes with a link back to the video. Check YouTube's terms and copyright rules before you reuse any text.

Privacy The Actor does not target personal data. It returns the public channel name of each video and nothing about viewers. Results stay in your Apify account. Text sent for the AI moment check is processed by our AI sub-processor only to compute the labels for your run.

I found a bug. Open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor.

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