YouTube Transcript Scraper - Subtitles, Captions & SRT

YouTube Transcript Scraper downloads the transcript, subtitles and closed captions (CC) of any public YouTube video, Short or past live stream, in bulk, from video URLs or whole channels. You get the timed lines, the full text in one piece, its word count and language, optional SRT and WebVTT subtitle files, and the video's title, channel, publish date, duration and views. Human-made and auto-generated captions, in every language a video has. No login, no API key, from $0.60 per 1,000 transcripts.

What does YouTube Transcript Scraper do?

YouTube Transcript Scraper turns YouTube captions into clean text and data:

• 📝 Transcripts in any language. Human-made captions and YouTube's auto-generated ones. List the languages you want in order of preference and each video returns the first one it has, or switch on Return every language to get every caption track.
• ⏱️ Timestamps and full text. Each transcript comes as timed segments (start, duration, text) and as one clean full text with its word count: ready for a language model, a search index or a spreadsheet.
• 🎬 SRT and WebVTT files. Add each transcript as a ready-to-use .srt or .vtt subtitle file for video editors, players and translation tools.
• 📺 Whole channels. Paste a channel URL or @handle to get the transcripts of its latest videos, Shorts (/shorts) or past live streams (/streams), with no upper limit.
• 🔗 Any link works: watch URLs, youtu.be short links, Shorts, live and embed URLs, mobile and music links, or bare 11-character video IDs.
• ℹ️ Video details in the same result: title, channel name, ID and URL, publish date, duration, views, category, keywords, description, thumbnail, and every caption language the video has.
• ✅ No surprises: a video without a usable transcript still gets a result saying why (no captions, private, age-restricted, members-only, live now), and you are not charged for it.

What data can you extract from YouTube transcripts?

Data	Fields
Transcript	fullText, wordCount, language, languageName, isAutoGenerated
Timed segments	segments: start and duration in seconds, text
Subtitle files (optional)	srt, vtt
Video	videoId, url, title, description, publishedAt, durationSeconds, viewCount, category, keywords, thumbnailUrl
Channel	channelName, channelId, channelUrl
Languages	availableLanguages: every caption track the video has
No transcript	error and errorMessage (free)

How to get the transcript of a YouTube video

1. Open YouTube Transcript Scraper on Apify and click Try for free.
2. Paste video URLs (or IDs), channel URLs, or both.
3. Choose your languages (for example en, es), or switch on Return every language.
4. Keep Include timestamps on for timed segments, and pick Subtitle files (SRT, WebVTT) if you need them.
5. Click Start, then download the transcripts as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or read them through the API.

How to download YouTube subtitles as SRT

Add the videos, choose the language, and under Subtitle files pick SRT (or WebVTT). Each result then carries the subtitles as a complete .srt file in the srt field, ready to save or load into an editor.

How to get transcripts of a whole YouTube channel

Paste the channel URL, for example https://www.youtube.com/@NASA, and set Max videos per channel. Its latest videos come first. Use https://www.youtube.com/@NASA/shorts for its Shorts or /streams for its past live streams.

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube transcripts?

Pay per transcript, with platform usage and proxies included and no monthly fee for the Actor:

Result	Price per 1,000	Silver plan	Gold plan
Transcripts	$0.60	$0.54	$0.48
Videos without a transcript	free	free	free

A transcript is one video in one language, so a video costs one transcript unless you ask for every language. SRT and WebVTT files are included at no extra cost.

Examples:

• 1,000 videos in English: $0.60.
• A channel's last 500 videos with SRT files: $0.30.

Apify's free plan comes with $5 of platform credit every month, enough for about 8,000 transcripts. Set a maximum cost per run when you start the Actor and it stops cleanly before the first transcript that would go over it.

Input example

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY",
    "https://youtu.be/aBcDeFgHiJk",
    "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aBcDeFgHiJk"
  ],
  "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@NASA"],
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 50,
  "languages": ["en", "es"],
  "allLanguages": false,
  "includeTimestamps": true,
  "subtitleFormats": ["srt"],
  "includeAutoGenerated": true
}

How the language is picked, for each video:

1. The first language in your list that the video has, human-made captions before auto-generated ones. en also matches regional variants such as en-US, and pt-BR falls back to pt.
2. If the video has none of your languages: its best available transcript, usually the one in its original language.

Output example

One result per video and transcript language. The Overview view shows one row per transcript, and the Timed segments view one row per line.

{
  "videoId": "aBcDeFgHiJk",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBcDeFgHiJk",
  "title": "How Transcripts Work",
  "channelName": "Example Channel",
  "channelId": "UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@examplechannel",
  "publishedAt": "2024-03-14T16:00:07.000Z",
  "durationSeconds": 642,
  "viewCount": 1520311,
  "category": "Education",
  "language": "en",
  "languageName": "English",
  "isAutoGenerated": false,
  "wordCount": 1873,
  "availableLanguages": [
    { "language": "en", "languageName": "English", "isAutoGenerated": false },
    { "language": "en", "languageName": "English", "isAutoGenerated": true },
    { "language": "es", "languageName": "Spanish", "isAutoGenerated": false }
  ],
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aBcDeFgHiJk/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "keywords": ["captions", "subtitles"],
  "description": "The video's description...",
  "fullText": "Hello and welcome. Today we look at how captions are timed...",
  "srt": "1\n00:00:00,480 --> 00:00:03,120\nHello and welcome.\n\n2\n00:00:03,120 --> 00:00:07,320\nToday we look at how captions are timed...\n",
  "segments": [
    { "start": 0.48, "duration": 2.64, "text": "Hello and welcome." },
    { "start": 3.12, "duration": 4.2, "text": "Today we look at how captions are timed..." }
  ],
  "sourceUrl": "https://youtu.be/aBcDeFgHiJk",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-08T10:00:00.000Z"
}

• start and duration are in seconds. Auto-generated captions keep each line on screen while the next one is spoken; their segments end where the next one starts, so segments never overlap.
• fullText is the transcript as one string, with line breaks and formatting tags removed. wordCount counts words the way the language writes them, so Chinese and Japanese are counted too.
• srt and vtt appear when you pick them under Subtitle files; segments is left out when Include timestamps is off.

A video without a usable transcript gets one free result with the reason in error:

{
  "videoId": "aBcDeFgHiJk",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBcDeFgHiJk",
  "title": "A Silent Video",
  "availableLanguages": [],
  "error": "no transcript",
  "errorMessage": "The video has no captions."
}

error is one of no transcript, video unavailable (private, removed or blocked in the proxy's country), age restricted, members only, live stream (live now or not started; captions come after it ends) and fetch failed (try the video again later). A SUMMARY record in the run's key-value store lists how many transcripts were saved, the videos without one and why, and any input that could not be read.

Use cases

• AI and LLM datasets: clean spoken-language text from a topic, a channel or a list of videos, with timestamps for alignment.
• Retrieval and chatbots (RAG): index what videos say and link answers back to the second they were said.
• Content research: read what creators in your niche talk about and find quotes without watching hours of video.
• SEO and repurposing: turn videos into articles, show notes, summaries and keyword lists.
• Subtitles, translation and accessibility: SRT and WebVTT files with their timings, in every language the video has.

Use it via API, Python, JavaScript and integrations

Run it and get the transcripts in one call with the Apify API:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/socialscrapers~youtube-transcript-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY"], "languages": ["en"]}'

Python, with the Apify client:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("socialscrapers/youtube-transcript-scraper").call(run_input={
    "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@NASA"],
    "maxVideosPerChannel": 20,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["title"], item.get("wordCount"))

JavaScript, with the Apify client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('socialscrapers/youtube-transcript-scraper').call({ videoUrls: ['https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY'], subtitleFormats: ['srt'] });
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

You can also schedule runs, get a webhook when a run finishes, and send the results to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack and other tools through Apify integrations. AI agents and assistants can run it through Apify's MCP server.

YouTube Data API vs YouTube Transcript Scraper

	Official YouTube Data API	YouTube Transcript Scraper
Setup	Google Cloud project, API key and sign-in	None: paste video or channel URLs
Whose captions	Only videos you are allowed to edit	Any public video
Output	Caption file only	Full text, timed segments, SRT, WebVTT and video details

Limits

• Public videos only. Private, members-only and age-restricted videos need a signed-in account, so they are reported with the reason and not charged.
• Only the captions a video has. YouTube makes auto-generated captions for most videos with speech, but not for music-only videos, and not right away for brand-new uploads. There is no machine translation: a language the video has no captions in falls back to the best available one.
• Live streams have captions only after they end.
• Videos blocked in some countries are reported as video unavailable when they cannot be read from the proxy's location. Set a proxy country to read them from a country where they are available.
• Keep the default residential proxy for large runs.
• Datacenter proxy choices fall back to residential. If you pick Apify Proxy without the RESIDENTIAL group, the first session YouTube refuses moves the run to RESIDENTIAL, in the same country; custom proxy URLs are used exactly as given.
• Share links work as they are: youtu.be/… links, links with the app's ?si=… share parameter, and /shorts/…, /live/… and /embed/… links all name their video.
• A run with 0 transcripts still succeeds when your input was fine. When a video has no captions, is private or deleted, or a channel does not exist, the run ends as Succeeded with a status message naming each input and why, and nothing is charged. A run fails only when no input is usable at all, or when YouTube refuses every one of 3 or more inputs.

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape YouTube transcripts? YouTube Transcript Scraper collects only captions that anyone can see on YouTube without signing in. You are responsible for how you use them, including copyright, YouTube's terms and the laws that apply to you.

Do I need a YouTube account, cookies or an API key? No. Paste video or channel URLs and start the run.

What happens when a video has no transcript? You get one free result for it, with the reason in error and the video's details, so you know what happened to every video you asked for.

How do I get only human-made captions? Turn off Include auto-generated captions. Videos with only auto-generated captions are then reported as no transcript.

How do I get every language of a video? Turn on Return every language. Each language is a separate result, charged as one transcript.

Can I download YouTube subtitles as an SRT file? Yes. Pick SRT (or WebVTT) under Subtitle files; each result then holds the complete file.

How fast is it? About 100 videos in half a minute in our tests.

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