YouTube Transcript Scraper

Get the transcript of any public YouTube video, a whole playlist, a channel's uploads, or the results of a YouTube search. Works for videos in 150+ languages, translates transcripts, and can transcribe videos that have no captions with AI.

What you get

For each video:

• Full transcript text, plus timed segments (start, end, text)
• Title, channel, duration, language, whether captions were auto-generated, and the other caption languages available
• Or the transcript as SRT, VTT, Markdown, CSV or plain text, ready to save as a subtitle file

How to use it

1. Add video URLs (watch, youtu.be, Shorts, embed links or IDs), and/or a playlist or channel URL, and/or a search query.
2. Optionally pick a language, a language to translate to, and an output format.
3. Run it. Each video becomes one row in the dataset; download it as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read it through the Apify API.

Example input

{
  "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"],
  "playlistOrChannel": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
  "maxVideos": 20,
  "translateTo": "es",
  "format": "json"
}

Example output

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video)",
  "author": "Rick Astley",
  "durationSeconds": 213,
  "language": "en",
  "autoGenerated": false,
  "source": "captions",
  "text": "We're no strangers to love ...",
  "segments": [{ "start": 18.6, "duration": 3.2, "end": 21.8, "timestamp": "0:18", "text": "We're no strangers to love" }]
}

Pricing

You pay per transcript delivered. Videos that fail (private, removed, no captions) are free.

Event	Price
Transcript	$0.005 ($5 per 1,000)
AI transcription, per minute of video (only with "AI transcription" on, for videos without captions)	$0.005

Set a maximum cost per run in the run options and the Actor stops when it's reached.

Use cases

• Feed YouTube videos into ChatGPT, Claude, RAG pipelines or vector databases
• Summarize or search a channel's back catalogue
• Make subtitle files (SRT/VTT) or translations
• Research: competitor content, interviews, podcasts, lectures

FAQ

Why do some videos fail? The video is private, age-restricted, removed, or has no captions. Turn on AI transcription for videos without captions.

Can I use it from code or from n8n, Make or Zapier? Yes, through the Apify API or Apify's integrations. If you need high volume or lower latency, the same engine is available as a REST API, Python SDK, n8n node and MCP server at transcript-yt.com.

Is it legal? It only reads publicly available captions. You are responsible for how you use the content.