Instagram Reels Transcript Scraper - Reels to Text, No Login

Turn any public Instagram reel into text. Paste reel links or creator usernames and get the full spoken transcript, the opening hook line, detected language, sentence-level timestamps, and the reel's caption, date and play/like/comment counts - no login, no cookies, no browser.

What you get

One dataset row per reel with:

• Transcript: transcript (full spoken text), wordCount, hook (the first line of speech), hookStartSeconds
• Timestamps: segments (start, end, text in seconds) and detected language
• Reel metadata: shortcode, postUrl, username, fullName, isVerified, caption, takenAt, durationSeconds, likeCount, commentCount, playCount, thumbnailUrl, videoUrl
• Status: ok, no_speech (music-only reels, not charged) or failed with a clear per-reel error

Export to JSON, CSV, Excel or Google Sheets from the Apify console, or pull the dataset via API.

Use cases

• Hook and script research - study how viral reels open and what creators actually say, at scale
• Content repurposing - turn reels into captions, blog posts, newsletters and threads
• Competitor and creator monitoring - transcribe a creator's newest reels on a schedule
• Trend mining - extract the phrases, products and claims being made in a niche
• Accessibility and subtitles - timestamped segments ready for SRT-style captions

How to use

1. Paste Reel URLs, or enter Creator usernames and set Max reels per creator (newest first).
2. Optionally set a Language hint and untick Include timestamped segments if you only want the plain transcript.
3. Run the actor. One record per reel appears in the Dataset tab.

Output example

{
  "status": "ok",
  "source": "@natgeo",
  "shortcode": "DdbffLbocMG",
  "postUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdbffLbocMG/",
  "username": "natgeo",
  "fullName": "National Geographic",
  "isVerified": true,
  "caption": "Presented by @Rolex. National Geographic Explorer ...",
  "takenAt": "2026-09-18T13:01:21.000Z",
  "durationSeconds": 85,
  "likeCount": 23493,
  "commentCount": 86,
  "playCount": 1087596,
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": "Africa is my home. When I explore it, I find it filled with hope, with treasures, with wildlife...",
  "wordCount": 201,
  "hook": "Africa is my home.",
  "hookStartSeconds": 0,
  "segments": [
    { "start": 0, "end": 5, "text": "Africa is my home. When I explore it, I find it filled with hope," },
    { "start": 5, "end": 9, "text": "with treasures, with wildlife, with biodiversity." }
  ]
}

Pricing

Pay per event: a small fee for every reel processed (metadata, speech check), a fee per transcript delivered, and a small per-minute fee for each minute beyond the first. Private posts, deleted posts and failures are not charged. Free-plan users get 3 transcripts per run; upgrade to any paid Apify plan to remove the limit.

FAQ

Does it work on any reel? Any public reel or video post. Private accounts and deleted posts return a per-reel failed status without stopping the run.

What about reels with only music? They come back as no_speech with full metadata; only the small per-reel processing fee applies.

How accurate is it? Sentence-level timestamps are accurate to about a second; names and non-English speech are handled well.

Which languages? 100+ languages with automatic detection.

How many reels per run? Up to 1,000. Use Creator usernames with Max reels per creator to transcribe a whole profile.