YouTube Transcript Scraper: Bulk Captions, Timestamps & Translation

Download YouTube transcripts in bulk: the full transcript text, timestamped segments (start, duration, text) and an optional [m:ss] timestamped transcript, in any available caption language or auto-translated into another one. Video metadata (title, channel, views, length, keywords, description, thumbnail) is included. Works with watch, youtu.be, Shorts, embed and live URLs or plain video IDs. $3 per 1,000 transcripts, and you're never charged for videos without captions.

Why this scraper

• Cheaper: $3 per 1,000 videos versus $5–$10 for the most popular transcript Actors.
• Fair billing: private, deleted or caption-less videos are still returned with a clear error, but not charged.
• Language control: pick a preferred language, prefer human captions or auto-generated ones, or translate with translateTo.
• AI-ready output: clean text for LLMs, summarisation, RAG, SEO and content repurposing; segments for subtitles and search.
• Robust: retries, alternate YouTube clients and automatic session rotation when YouTube rate-limits.

Input

Field	Description
videos	YouTube URLs or IDs.
language	Preferred caption language (default en).
preferManualCaptions	Prefer human captions over auto-generated (default on).
translateTo	Auto-translate into this language code.
includeSegments	Timestamped segments array (default on).
includeTimestampedText	[m:ss] text lines (default off).
includeMetadata	Video metadata (default on).
maxVideos	Cost cap.

{ "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", "https://youtu.be/aircAruvnKk"], "language": "en", "includeTimestampedText": true }

Output

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "channelName": "Rick Astley", "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw", "viewCount": 1826381078, "lengthSeconds": 213,
  "language": "en", "isAutoGenerated": false, "isTranslated": false,
  "availableLanguages": ["de-DE", "en", "en (auto)", "es-419", "ja", "pt-BR"],
  "transcript": "[♪♪♪] ♪ We're no strangers to love ♪ ♪ You know the rules and so do I ♪ ...",
  "wordCount": 487, "segmentCount": 61,
  "segments": [{"start": 1.36, "duration": 1.68, "text": "[♪♪♪]"}, {"start": 18.64, "duration": 3.24, "text": "♪ We're no strangers to love ♪"}],
  "timestampedTranscript": "[0:01] [♪♪♪]\n[0:18] ♪ We're no strangers to love ♪\n...",
  "error": null
}

Pricing

$3.00 per 1,000 transcripts ($0.003 each), plus $0.00005 per run start. Videos without a transcript cost nothing.

Notes

• Only videos with captions (uploaded or auto-generated) have transcripts. Live streams in progress, private, age-restricted or deleted videos return an error.
• Transcripts belong to their creators; respect copyright when reusing them.