YouTube Transcript Scraper - Captions & Comments

Get the transcript of a YouTube video as timestamped text, together with video metadata and, optionally, its comments. One video per run, flat JSON output, no API key.

The actor reads the video's caption track (manual captions preferred, auto-generated as fallback; English preferred, otherwise the first available language) through YouTube's InnerTube endpoints. Requests go through Apify Proxy and are retried with exponential backoff on errors and rate limits. Comment author names are pseudonymized (first name + initial).

Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
videoUrl	string	Yes	—	YouTube video URL or 11-char video ID
includeComments	boolean	No	false	Also fetch video comments
maxComments	integer	No	100	Max comments to fetch (1-5000)

Output

{
    "videoId": "aBcDeFgHiJk",
    "title": "How Solar Panels Work",
    "channel": "Example Science Channel",
    "channelId": "UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "duration": 212,
    "durationFormatted": "3:32",
    "viewCount": 152000,
    "publishDate": "2024-03-12",
    "description": "In this video we explain...",
    "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aBcDeFgHiJk/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "isLive": false,
    "transcriptLanguage": "en",
    "transcriptSegmentCount": 45,
    "transcript": "[0:00] Today we look at how solar panels turn light into electricity\n[0:05] It starts with the photovoltaic cell...",
    "commentCount": 100,
    "comments": [
        {
            "author": "@jan***",
            "text": "Very clear explanation, thanks!",
            "publishedTime": "2 years ago",
            "likeCount": 1200,
            "replyCount": 15
        }
    ],
    "scrapedAt": "2024-12-01T10:30:00Z"
}

Input Example

{
    "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBcDeFgHiJk",
    "includeComments": true,
    "maxComments": 50
}

Pricing

Pay-per-event, no start fee: $3.50 per 1,000 video transcripts on the Apify Free plan, with lower prices on paid plans. Comments (includeComments) are included at no extra charge.

Event	Free	Starter	Scale	Business	Enterprise
Video transcript (TRANSCRIPT)	$3.50	$3.00	$2.60	$2.10	$2.10

Prices in USD per 1,000 events.

Cost examples (Free plan)

Usage	Cost
1 video transcript	$0.0035
100 video transcripts	$0.35
Comments	included

Use cases

• Content repurposing — turn a video into a blog post, summary, or training document
• Research — search and analyze what's being said across hundreds of videos
• Sentiment analysis — pull comments at scale for audience insights
• Accessibility — extract transcripts for indexing, translation, or archiving
• AI pipelines — feed video content into LLMs for summarization, Q&A, or retrieval-augmented generation

Limitations

• Captions required — a transcript is returned only when the video has captions (manual or auto-generated). Without captions the record still contains the video metadata (and comments if requested), with an empty transcript and transcriptSegmentCount: 0.
• One language — the actor picks one caption track: English if available (manual before auto-generated), otherwise the first track listed. There is no language selection input.
• One video per run — run the actor once per video.
• Comments — top-level comments only, in YouTube's default order; publishedTime is relative ("2 years ago"). Videos with comments disabled return an empty list, and fewer than maxComments may be returned.
• Privacy — comment authors are pseudonymized: channel handles keep only their first 3 characters (@jan***), full names become first name + initial (Jane D.).
• Unavailable videos — private, deleted or region-blocked videos end the run FAILED.

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