🎙️ Podcast Transcript Scraper — RSS podcast:transcript

Pull per-episode transcripts from any podcast that publishes them — no login, no AI transcription. A growing share of shows ship a transcript with every episode via the Podcasting 2.0 <podcast:transcript> RSS tag, and this actor reads any feed, grabs those transcripts, and returns clean text, timestamped segments, and SRT/VTT — across any compliant host (Buzzsprout, Captivate, Transistor, Fireside, RSS.com, and more).

Because the show already published the transcript, there's no speech-to-text compute — it's fast and cheap.

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What does it do?

Give it one or more podcast RSS feed URLs and, per episode, it returns:

• 📝 Full transcript (plain text) — always included
• ⏲️ Timestamped segments — {start, end, text} (+ speaker when the feed provides JSON)
• 🎬 SRT / VTT subtitles
• 🎧 Episode metadata — title, publish date, duration, audio URL, episode link

No ASR, no API key — it reads the transcript the show published.

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What data does it extract?

For every episode:

• 🎙️ podcast, 🏷️ episode_title, 🆔 guid, 📅 published, ⏱️ duration
• 🔊 audio_url, 🔗 episode_url, feed_url
• 🗂️ transcript_type, transcript_url
• 📄 transcript, ⏲️ segments[], 🎬 srt, vtt, segment_count
• ✨ is_new (monitor), 🕒 scraped_at

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Who is it for?

• ✍️ Show teams & marketers repurposing episodes into show notes, articles, and clips.
• 🤖 AI / RAG builders assembling clean spoken-word datasets.
• 🔎 Researchers & journalists searching episode content by keyword.
• ♿ Accessibility & SEO workflows that need episode text.

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How to use it (step by step)

1. Click Try for free.
2. Paste one or more podcast RSS feed URLs.
3. (Optional) choose a preferred format and extra output formats (srt, vtt, segments).
4. Click Start, then open the Dataset tab to view/export.
5. (Optional) set monitorMode + a Schedule to grab transcripts for new episodes automatically.

Quick start

{ "feedUrls": ["https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/231452.rss"], "transcriptFormats": ["txt", "srt"] }

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Input

Field	What it does
feedUrls	podcast RSS feed URLs
maxEpisodes	hard cap per feed (0 = all)
preferType	srt · json · vtt (which transcript variant to use)
transcriptFormats	txt · segments · srt · vtt
monitorMode, alertOnNewEpisode	recurring new-episode watcher + alerts
webhookUrl, slackWebhookUrl, emailRecipients	alert channels
proxyConfiguration, requestConcurrency	proxy + parallelism

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Output

Each episode is one dataset record (fields above). Export to JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or RSS, or fetch via the Apify API. Episodes whose feed has no transcript tag are returned with a note (not faked).

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How much does it cost?

Pay-per-event — and with no transcription compute, it's cheap:

Event	What it covers	Suggested price
lot-scraped	each episode returned	~$0.003 / episode
lot-detail-enriched	each transcript fetched	~$0.003 / episode
monitor-run-completed	each scheduled watch run	~$0.05 / run
new-lot-detected	each new episode	~$0.02 / episode
alert-delivered	each Slack/email/webhook push	~$0.005 / alert

(Final per-event prices are set on the actor's pricing page.)

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How does it work without AI transcription?

Podcasting 2.0 added a <podcast:transcript> RSS tag so shows can publish a transcript (SRT / VTT / JSON) alongside each episode. This actor reads those published transcripts — it does not run speech-to-text, so there's no GPU/compute cost.

Coverage note: only feeds whose host/publisher opts in emit the tag (well supported by Buzzsprout, Captivate, Transistor, Fireside, RSS.com). Episodes without a transcript tag are reported as such.

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Is it legal to scrape podcast transcripts?

This actor reads publicly published RSS feeds and the transcript files the shows link from them. The content is the show's spoken material (copyrighted by its creators) plus public episode metadata. Scraping public feeds is generally legal, but you are responsible for your use — review the show's terms and respect creators' copyright; don't redistribute transcripts you're not licensed to.

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FAQ

Which shows have transcripts? Any whose feed includes <podcast:transcript>. Hosts like Buzzsprout, Captivate, Transistor, Fireside, and RSS.com support it; adoption is growing.

Is there a Whisper/ASR step? No — it reads the show's published transcript, so it's fast and cheap. (For shows without transcripts, you'd need an ASR actor instead.)

Can I get subtitles? Yes — add srt and/or vtt to transcriptFormats.

Can I auto-grab new episodes? Yes. Turn on monitorMode + an Apify Schedule — each run handles only episodes new since the last run.

How do I export? JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or RSS from the Dataset tab, or via the Apify API.

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Feedback

Want speaker diarization passthrough, chapter support, or a directory-search input? Open an issue on the actor.