YouTube Channel Transcripts

Get the transcripts of every video on a YouTube channel in one run: clean text, timestamped segments, SRT or VTT, with each video's title, publish date, views and length. Paste a channel, choose how many videos, and schedule it to receive only the new ones.

What you get

• A whole channel from one URL or handle. https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium, @veritasium, /channel/UC..., /c/name or /user/name. Videos come newest first.
• Only new videos since the last run. Turn on onlyNewVideos, schedule the Actor daily or weekly, and each run delivers only the videos you did not get yet.
• Date filter. publishedAfter keeps only videos published after a date; older ones cost nothing.
• Regular videos and past live streams by default, Shorts optional.
• Videos without captions never fail the run. They come back with an errorCode and are not charged.
• Video details included: title, publishedAt, viewCount, lengthSeconds, description, thumbnailUrl, channelId, at no extra cost.

Use cases

• Build a knowledge base or RAG index from a creator's channel, a podcast or a company's tutorial library.
• Monitor competitors or news channels: a daily schedule with onlyNewVideos sends each new video's transcript to Slack, Google Sheets or your AI summary workflow.
• Research a niche: pull the last 50 videos of 10 channels and search what they talk about.

Input

{
  "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium", "@lexfridman"],
  "maxVideosPerSource": 20,
  "publishedAfter": "2026-01-01",
  "onlyNewVideos": true,
  "includeShorts": false,
  "languages": ["en"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Field	What it does
channelUrls	Channel URLs or handles. A handle without @ also works.
maxVideosPerSource	Videos per channel, newest first (default 10).
publishedAfter	Skip videos published before this date.
onlyNewVideos	Skip videos already delivered in earlier runs of your account.
includeShorts	Add Shorts to the listing.
languages, captionType, includeSegments, subtitleFormats	Advanced: caption language, manual or auto captions, timestamps, SRT/VTT.
maxItems	Hard limit for the whole run (default 50).

Output

One item per video:

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "channel": "Rick Astley",
  "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "publishedAt": "2009-10-25T06:57:33+00:00",
  "viewCount": 1815077270,
  "lengthSeconds": 213,
  "language": "en",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "text": "[♪♪♪] ♪ We're no strangers to love ♪ ...",
  "wordCount": 487,
  "segments": [{ "text": "[♪♪♪]", "start": 1.36, "duration": 1.68 }],
  "errorCode": null,
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstleyYT",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-13T01:30:00+00:00"
}

sourceUrl is the channel the video came from. Items that could not be transcribed have error and errorCode filled in and are not charged:

errorCode	Meaning
NO_CAPTIONS	The video has no captions
NO_CAPTIONS_IN_LANGUAGE	No captions of the requested caption type
VIDEO_UNAVAILABLE / VIDEO_UNPLAYABLE	Private, removed or region-locked video
AGE_RESTRICTED	Age restricted video
LIVE_NOT_ENDED	Live stream still running or upcoming
BLOCKED	YouTube blocked every attempt; try again

Pricing

From US$ 3.50 per 1,000 transcripts delivered, no monthly fee. US$ 5.00 on the Free plan, lower on paid Apify plans:

Apify plan	Per 1,000 transcripts
Free	US$ 5.00
Starter (Bronze)	US$ 4.50
Scale (Silver)	US$ 4.00
Business (Gold) and above	US$ 3.50

Listing the channel is free, and so are videos without captions, unavailable or blocked. With onlyNewVideos on, a daily run over a channel that posted nothing new costs nothing.

How to use

• Console: paste the channels, click Start, download JSON, CSV or Excel.
• API: POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/scrapewise~youtube-channel-transcripts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN with the input as the body.
• Schedule: Apify Schedules, daily or weekly, with onlyNewVideos on.
• Integrations: n8n, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets and MCP clients (Claude, Cursor) through the Apify integrations.

FAQ

How many videos can I get from one channel? Set maxVideosPerSource up to 5,000 and maxItems at least as high. Large channels take longer; videos are transcribed 5 at a time.

Does it transcribe audio? No. It reads the captions YouTube already has, manual or auto-generated. Most videos in major languages have auto-generated captions.

How does "only new videos" behave on the first runs? Each run takes up to maxVideosPerSource videos per channel that you have not received yet, newest first. On a channel you never ran, the first runs fill in the back catalog (run 1 gets the 8 newest, run 2 the next 8, and so on). To receive only videos uploaded from now on, set publishedAfter to today's date together with onlyNewVideos.

Where is the "only new videos" memory kept? In a named key-value store in your own Apify account, youtube-channel-transcripts-only-new-videos, one record per channel. Delete it to start over.

Why are some items missing a transcript? The video has captions disabled, is private, age restricted or a live stream still running. Those items show the reason in errorCode and are free.

Can I get transcripts in a specific language? Put the language codes in languages, in order of preference. If the video has none of them, the first manual caption is used, then the auto-generated one.

Limitations

• Only videos with captions can be transcribed.
• Channels are listed from the Videos and Live tabs; members-only videos are skipped.
• YouTube blocks most datacenter IPs, so residential proxy is the default. Keep it on.
• Something broke? Open an issue on the Actor page. Issues are answered within 12 hours.

This Actor collects only public data and respects the site's terms.

Changelog

• 2026-09-14: lower price, from US$ 3.50 per 1,000 on paid plans (US$ 5.00 on Free).
• 2026-09-13, 0.1: first release. Channel URLs or handles, videos per channel, published-after filter, only-new-videos mode, Shorts on or off, SRT/VTT, video details.

Keywords: youtube channel transcripts, youtube channel transcript, full channel transcript, bulk youtube transcripts, channel to text.