YouTube Transcript API

Unofficial independent tool. This Actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or maintained by YouTube or Google.

Extract public YouTube transcripts/captions from video URLs or video IDs and receive structured text, timestamps, and transcript metadata.

What it returns

Each requested video produces one dataset row.

Successful rows include:

• normalized video ID and watch URL
• selected transcript language and language code
• whether the transcript is manually created or automatically generated
• whether the selected track is translatable
• available public transcript tracks
• full transcript text
• timestamp segment count
• approximate transcript duration
• optional timestamp segments (text, start, duration)
• SHA-256 hashes for text/segment reproducibility
• UTC collection timestamp

Failure rows include a status and bounded error information. Failed or unavailable transcript rows are not charged as transcript-result events.

Input example

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "GJLlxj_dtq8"
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "includeTimestamps": true
}

Accepted input forms include standard watch URLs, youtu.be links, Shorts URLs, embed/live URLs, and raw 11-character video IDs.

Language behavior

The Actor first looks for the requested language code. If that language is not publicly available for the video, it falls back to the first public transcript track exposed for that video.

Pricing

The primary PPE event is transcript-result.

You are charged for each successfully returned transcript result. Invalid input, unavailable captions, and failed retrieval rows do not trigger the transcript-result event.

Scope and limitations

This Actor is intentionally focused on public YouTube transcripts/captions for known videos.

It does not claim to provide video search, comments, channel crawling, video/audio downloads, private content, restricted content, or exhaustive YouTube data.

A requested video may return a failure row when captions are disabled, unavailable, restricted, removed, region/account dependent, or temporarily inaccessible.

No YouTube Data API key is required from the user.

Responsible use

Use only for lawful purposes. Respect applicable platform terms, copyright, privacy obligations, and local law. Do not use transcript content in ways that infringe third-party rights.