# Instagram Reels Transcript - Speech to Text for Public Reels (`tenfoldfleet/instagram-reels-transcript`) Actor

Get the transcript of an Instagram reel or video: paste reel links or a username and get the spoken words as text with timestamps, plus language, caption, views, likes, comments and post date. No login. $30 per 1,000 reels (per started 3 min of video); reels without speech and failures are free.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/tenfoldfleet/instagram-reels-transcript.md
- **Developed by:** [Tenfold Fleet](https://apify.com/tenfoldfleet) (community)
- **Categories:** Social media, Agents, MCP servers
- **Stats:** 1 total users, 0 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $30.00 / 1,000 reel transcripts

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

### What does Instagram Reels Transcript do?

**Instagram Reels Transcript** turns the **speech in public Instagram reels into text**. Paste reel links or shortcodes, or just a **username**, and you get the **full transcript**, **timestamped segments**, the **detected language** and the reel's **caption, views, likes, comments, duration and post date** in one clean row per reel.

It is an **Instagram transcript API** that needs **no login, no cookies and no Instagram account**: it reads only what Instagram shows any logged-out visitor, extracts the audio and runs **AI speech recognition (Whisper)** on it. Reels without spoken words are detected and **not charged**.

> Not affiliated with Instagram or Meta. Instagram is a trademark of Meta Platforms, Inc.

### Why use an Instagram reel transcript tool?

- ✍️ **Content repurposing**: turn reels into blog posts, threads, newsletters and captions.
- 🔎 **Creator and competitor research**: see what a creator or brand actually says across their latest reels, and search it like text.
- 🤖 **AI pipelines**: feed transcripts into an LLM for summaries, hooks, topic tagging or a RAG knowledge base.
- 📈 **Marketing analysis**: compare the scripts of reels with high and low views.
- ♿ **Accessibility and subtitles**: get timestamped text you can turn into captions.

It runs on the Apify platform, so you also get an **API**, scheduling, webhooks and integrations with Make, Zapier, n8n, LangChain and LlamaIndex.

### What data can it extract?

| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| `url`, `shortcode` | `https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfY6jCIgH-P/`, `CfY6jCIgH-P` |
| `ownerUsername`, `ownerFullName` | `garyvee`, `Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk` |
| `caption` | the reel's caption text |
| `postedAt` | `2022-06-29T12:32:37.000Z` |
| `durationSec` | `67.29` |
| `viewCount`, `playCount` | views shown on the reel; plays (filled for reels found through a username) |
| `likeCount`, `commentCount` | `768690`, `11713` |
| `language` | `en` (ISO 639-1, detected from the speech) |
| `transcript` | the full spoken text |
| `segments` | `[{ "start": 0, "end": 4.2, "text": "..." }]`, one sentence each, times in seconds |
| `wordCount` | number of words in the transcript |
| `noSpeech` | `true` when the reel has no spoken words (music only, silence); free |
| `chargedReels` | how many reel charges this row used (1 for reels up to 3 minutes) |
| `thumbnailUrl` | cover image URL |
| `error` | why a reel was skipped (private, removed, too long, ...), otherwise `null` |

### How to get the transcript of an Instagram reel

1. Click **Try for free**.
2. Paste reel links (`/reel/`, `/p/` and `/tv/` links all work) or shortcodes into **Reel URLs or shortcodes**, one per line.
3. Optional: add **Usernames** to transcribe each account's newest reels, and set **Reels per profile** (up to 12).
4. Leave **Spoken language** on `auto`, or give a code such as `es` as a hint.
5. Click **Start**, then download the results as **JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML**, or read them through the API.

### How much does it cost?

**$30 per 1,000 transcribed reels** ($0.03 per reel), pay per event. You only pay for reels where speech was found and transcribed. These are **free**: reels with no speech, private, removed or age-restricted reels, photos and carousels, videos over 10 minutes, and any failure.

Videos longer than 3 minutes count as one reel for every started 3 minutes (a 7-minute video counts as 3 reels), because transcription cost grows with length. The `chargedReels` field shows this on every row.

**Free Apify plan:** each run transcribes up to **3 reels of up to 3 minutes**, because every transcription costs the developer a speech-to-text fee. Other reels in the run come back as free rows with a note. Any paid Apify plan removes the limit.

### Input

```json
{
    "reels": [
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfY6jCIgH-P/",
        "DZn_a_tsZDj"
    ],
    "usernames": ["bbcnews"],
    "maxReelsPerProfile": 5,
    "language": "auto",
    "includeSegments": true
}
```

### Output

```json
{
    "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZn_a_tsZDj/",
    "shortcode": "DZn_a_tsZDj",
    "ownerUsername": "hubermanlab",
    "ownerFullName": "Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.",
    "caption": "PROTOCOLS: An Operating Manual for the Human Body ...",
    "postedAt": "2026-06-15T23:35:22.000Z",
    "durationSec": 55.12,
    "viewCount": 965222,
    "playCount": null,
    "likeCount": 133940,
    "commentCount": 2661,
    "language": "en",
    "transcript": "...",
    "wordCount": 148,
    "segments": [{ "start": 0, "end": 4.6, "text": "..." }],
    "noSpeech": false,
    "chargedReels": 1,
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://...",
    "input": "DZn_a_tsZDj",
    "error": null,
    "transcribedAt": "2026-10-23T12:00:00.000Z"
}
```

Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML from the run page, or fetch it with the Apify API.

### Tips

- Turn off **Timestamped segments** if you only need the text; the full transcript is still returned.
- A language hint helps with short reels and with mixed-language speech. Transcripts stay in the spoken language; nothing is translated.
- For a whole account, use **Usernames**: Instagram shows logged-out visitors an account's 12 newest reels, so up to 12 per profile.
- Set a **maximum cost per run** in the run options; the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

### Use it with AI agents (MCP)

Give Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP client this Actor as a tool through Apify's MCP server: add `https://mcp.apify.com?tools=tenfoldfleet/instagram-reels-transcript` as a remote MCP server and sign in with your Apify account. The agent fills in the input, runs the Actor and reads the transcripts itself; you pay the same per-event price as a normal run.

### FAQ

#### Do I need an Instagram account, cookies or a login?

No. The Actor only reads public reels the way a logged-out visitor sees them. It never logs in.

#### Which languages are supported?

The Whisper speech model knows about 100 languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, French, German, Italian, Indonesian, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. The `language` field tells you what was detected.

#### What happens with reels that only have music?

A reel with only instrumental music, sound effects or silence normally returns `noSpeech: true` and is free. The Actor also removes the filler phrases speech models tend to invent on silent or musical stretches, such as a lone "Thank you." Sung lyrics are words to a speech model, so a reel whose audio is a song with vocals can come back with the lyrics as its transcript.

#### How accurate are the transcripts?

They are made by AI speech recognition (Whisper) and are usually close to word for word on clear speech, with punctuation. Heavy music, crosstalk, strong accents or very noisy audio can cause mistakes, and timestamps are approximate (within about a second).

#### Can it transcribe private or age-restricted reels?

No. Those need a logged-in account, so they come back as free rows with an `error`.

#### Is it legal to transcribe Instagram reels?

The Actor only processes publicly available content. You are responsible for how you use the transcripts: respect copyright, Instagram's terms and privacy laws such as the GDPR, and don't use personal data without a legitimate reason. If unsure, ask a lawyer.

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# Actor input Schema

## `reels` (type: `array`):

Public Instagram reels or video posts to transcribe: full links (https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfY6jCIgH-P/, /p/... and /tv/... work too) or bare shortcodes (CfY6jCIgH-P). One reel = one result. Free Apify plan: the first 3 reels per run are transcribed.

## `usernames` (type: `array`):

Optional. Public Instagram accounts (username, @handle or profile URL). The actor transcribes each account's newest reels, up to "Reels per profile".

## `maxReelsPerProfile` (type: `integer`):

How many of each account's newest reels to transcribe (pinned reels count last). Instagram shows the 12 newest reels to logged-out visitors, so the maximum is 12.

## `language` (type: `string`):

Leave on auto to detect the language of each reel. Or give an ISO 639-1 code (en, es, pt, hi, fr, de, ...) as a hint for reels in that language. The transcript is always in the language actually spoken (no translation).

## `includeSegments` (type: `boolean`):

Add sentence-level segments with start and end times in seconds. Turn off if you only need the full transcript text.

## `maxConcurrency` (type: `integer`):

How many reels to process in parallel.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "reels": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfY6jCIgH-P/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZn_a_tsZDj/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/De1BmCpDKYL/"
  ],
  "maxReelsPerProfile": 10,
  "language": "auto",
  "includeSegments": true,
  "maxConcurrency": 3
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "reels": [
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfY6jCIgH-P/",
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZn_a_tsZDj/",
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/De1BmCpDKYL/"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("tenfoldfleet/instagram-reels-transcript").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "reels": [
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfY6jCIgH-P/",
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZn_a_tsZDj/",
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/De1BmCpDKYL/",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("tenfoldfleet/instagram-reels-transcript").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "reels": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfY6jCIgH-P/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZn_a_tsZDj/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/De1BmCpDKYL/"
  ]
}' |
apify call tenfoldfleet/instagram-reels-transcript --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,tenfoldfleet/instagram-reels-transcript"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/mukCSOrE8GnnHDOLx/builds/bQ38d1D9anpwekMcB/openapi.json