YouTube Transcripts & Captions Scraper (Subtitles at Scale)

Pull transcripts from any YouTube video — full text plus timestamps, every language track, no API key.

Pull transcripts and closed captions from any YouTube video, at scale, with no API key. Returns the full transcript text plus timestamped segments, all available caption languages, and whether the captions are human-written or auto-generated.

Built for RAG pipelines over video libraries, sentiment analysis, video summarization, accessibility workflows, and agentic tools that read video content.

What you get

A clean, structured transcript record per video. Choose a preferred language or let the actor fall back to whatever's available. Returns both the full joined transcript_text (ideal for vector stores) and a segments array with per-line timestamps (ideal for subtitle overlays and chapter generation).

Output fields

Field	Description
video_id	11-character YouTube video ID
video_url	Canonical watch URL
language_code	Actual caption language returned (ISO 639-1)
language_name	Human-readable language name
is_auto_generated	true if auto-captions, false if human-written
auto_translated	true if auto-translated into the requested language
available_languages	Array of {code, name, is_auto_generated} for every track on the video
transcript_text	Full transcript joined into one string
segments	Array of {text, start, duration} per caption line
segment_count	Number of caption lines
total_duration_seconds	Total covered duration
data_source	Origin tag
error	Error code if captions were not retrievable (see below)

Possible error values: no_captions_available, private_video, region_locked, age_restricted_or_login_required, video_unavailable, watch_page_unreachable, no_player_response, transcript_fetch_failed, empty_transcript.

Example output

{
    "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "video_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "language_code": "en",
    "language_name": "English",
    "is_auto_generated": false,
    "auto_translated": false,
    "available_languages": [
        {"code": "en", "name": "English", "is_auto_generated": false},
        {"code": "es", "name": "Spanish", "is_auto_generated": false},
        {"code": "en", "name": "English (auto-generated)", "is_auto_generated": true}
    ],
    "transcript_text": "We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I ...",
    "segment_count": 58,
    "total_duration_seconds": 212.48,
    "segments": [
        {"text": "We're no strangers to love", "start": 18.8, "duration": 7.0},
        {"text": "You know the rules and so do I", "start": 25.8, "duration": 3.5},
        {"text": "A full commitment's what I'm thinking of", "start": 29.3, "duration": 3.7}
    ],
    "data_source": "youtube_timedtext"
}

Example error record (no captions published)

{
    "video_id": "abc123XYZ_0",
    "video_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123XYZ_0",
    "error": "no_captions_available",
    "available_languages": [],
    "data_source": "youtube_timedtext"
}

Input parameters

Parameter	Required	Description
videoUrls	One of	YouTube URLs. Supports watch?v=, youtu.be/, shorts/, embed/.
videoIds	One of	Raw 11-character video IDs. Either videoUrls or videoIds must be provided.
languageCode	No	Preferred caption language. Default en.
preferManual	No	Prefer human-written captions over auto-generated. Default true.
includeTimestamps	No	Include the segments array. Default true. Turn off for smaller RAG payloads.
includeAutoTranslate	No	Fall back to YouTube auto-translate if the requested language isn't available. Default false.
useResidentialProxy	No	Route through a residential proxy for more reliable access. Default true.
maxResults	No	Cap on transcripts returned. Default 5, max 10000.

Use cases

• AI engineers (RAG): index thousands of talks, lectures, tutorials for semantic search. transcript_text drops straight into your vector store.
• Content marketers: generate written blog posts, newsletters, and social clips from podcast and YouTube content at scale.
• Product & research teams: run sentiment analysis across competitor channels and track topic drift over time.
• Accessibility & compliance: build closed-caption corpora in bulk for ADA / WCAG compliance.
• Agent builders: plug into Claude / GPT / MCP workflows so an agent can "read" a YouTube URL.
• Language learners & translators: grab multilingual caption tracks side-by-side for study material.
• Video summarization tools: feed full transcripts into an LLM to generate chapter markers, key takeaways, and tl;drs.

Limitations

• Not all videos have transcripts — some uploaders disable captions entirely. You'll get a no_captions_available error for these (comedy clips, silent videos, very new uploads).
• Auto-generated transcripts are lower quality — especially for music, accents, and technical content. Set preferManual: true (default) to pick human-written tracks whenever available.
• Age-restricted and private videos are blocked — they return structured error records (age_restricted_or_login_required, private_video) rather than transcripts. Region-locked videos behave the same way.
• YouTube occasionally throttles heavy uninterrupted runs; the actor backs off automatically on rate limits.

Compared to alternatives

• Apify's pintostudio/youtube-transcript-scraper — similar scope, slightly higher per-result price on BRONZE, no structured error codes for failed videos.
• youtube-transcript-api (Python library) — free to run yourself, but you handle the proxy, consent cookie, and retry logic. This actor is a hosted drop-in with built-in reliability.
• Official YouTube Data API — captions endpoint requires OAuth and channel ownership; not usable for third-party videos.

Pairs well with

• YouTube Scraper — pull video metadata (title, description, views, likes, channel) first, then feed the IDs here for transcripts.
• Google News Scraper — enrich news-video transcripts with source articles.
• Reddit Scraper — cross-reference discussion threads with the video's transcript.

FAQ

Does this work on YouTube Shorts? Yes — youtube.com/shorts/{id} URLs work identically to regular videos.

Do I need an API key? No. The actor uses YouTube's public caption endpoints — no OAuth, no Google Cloud project.

Can I get transcripts for private videos? No. Private videos return a private_video error. Only publicly published videos are supported.

Which languages are supported? Every language a video has published captions for. Use languageCode to pick your preferred track, or enable includeAutoTranslate to cross-translate.

What happens if captions are disabled? You get a structured error: "no_captions_available" record with the video ID. Your pipeline can filter, retry, or skip cleanly.

Can I feed this straight into a vector DB? Yes — the transcript_text field is a single joined string designed for RAG ingestion. Turn off includeTimestamps to drop the segments array and shrink payloads further.

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Last verified: 2026-05