YouTube Transcripts & Video Data Scraper

Get YouTube transcripts in bulk, with timestamps, plus the video data you need around them: title, channel, publish date, duration, views, description and keywords. Paste video URLs, or point it at channels, playlists or search queries and process many videos in one run.

Built for AI and LLM pipelines, content research, SEO and media monitoring: clean text ready to summarize, embed or analyze.

How to use

1. Sign up for Apify — the free plan's monthly credit is enough to try this Actor.
2. Open YouTube Transcript Scraper, fill in the input (the form is pre-filled with a working example) and click Start.
3. Watch results stream into the dataset table while the run is going.
4. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML or RSS — or pull the results from your own code with the Apify API.

Why use this YouTube transcripts scraper?

• Transcript + metadata in one row. No second actor needed for titles, dates or view counts.
• Bulk sources. Video URLs (watch, youtu.be, Shorts, live), channels (URL, @handle or ID; Videos, Shorts or Live tab), playlists, and YouTube search.
• Any language.
  • Set preferred languages (e.g. en, es, de) and get manual captions first, auto-generated as fallback.
  • Every row lists all available caption languages.
• Timestamped segments (start, duration, text) for chapters, quotes and clip finding. Or turn them off to get just the full text.
• No login, no browser, no API key. Fast HTTP requests; about 20 videos with transcripts in under 20 seconds in testing.
• Pay only for useful rows. Skip videos without a transcript means you are never charged for videos with no captions.

How to scrape YouTube transcripts

{
  "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"],
  "channels": ["@mkbhd"],
  "playlists": ["https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab"],
  "searchQueries": ["ai agents tutorial"],
  "maxVideosPerSource": 20,
  "preferredLanguages": ["en"],
  "includeTimestamps": true,
  "skipVideosWithoutTranscript": true,
  "maxResults": 500
}

Input reference

Every option at a glance. A minimal input that works as-is:

{
  "videos": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"
  ],
  "channelTab": "videos",
  "maxVideosPerSource": 20,
  "preferredLanguages": [
    "en"
  ],
  "includeTimestamps": true,
  "includePublishDate": true,
  "maxResults": 500
}

All fields:

• videos (Video URLs) — YouTube video URLs or IDs (watch, youtu.be, Shorts, live). Playlist URLs work too.
• channels (Channels) — Channel URLs, @handles or channel IDs. The newest videos are processed.
• channelTab (Channel videos type) — Which channel tab to read. Options: videos, shorts, streams (Live streams); default "videos".
• playlists (Playlists) — Playlist URLs or IDs.
• searchQueries (Search queries) — Search YouTube and process the top videos for each query.
• maxVideosPerSource (Max videos per channel / playlist / search) — Limit for each channel, playlist and search query. Default 20.
• preferredLanguages (Preferred transcript languages) — Language codes in order of preference, e.g. en, es, de. Manual captions are preferred over auto-generated ones. If none match, the best available transcript is used.
• translateTo (Translate transcript to) — Optional language code (e.g. en, ko, ja). Uses YouTube's own caption translation.
• includeTimestamps (Include timestamped segments) — Adds a segments array with start time, duration and text for every caption line. Default true.
• includePublishDate (Include publish date & category) — One extra request per video. Turn off for maximum speed. Default true.
• skipVideosWithoutTranscript (Skip videos without a transcript) — Don't return (or charge for) videos that have no captions. Default false.
• maxResults (Max results) — Stop after this many videos. You are charged per video. Default 500.
• proxy (Proxy) — Apify datacenter proxy works for YouTube.

What the YouTube transcripts output looks like

{
  "videoId": "kYB8IZa5AuE",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYB8IZa5AuE",
  "title": "Linear transformations and matrices | Chapter 3, Essence of linear algebra",
  "channelName": "3Blue1Brown",
  "channelId": "UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw",
  "publishDate": "2016-08-07T14:39:19-07:00",
  "category": "Education",
  "durationSeconds": 658,
  "viewCount": 7107558,
  "isLive": false,
  "keywords": [],
  "transcriptLanguage": "en",
  "transcriptIsAutoGenerated": false,
  "availableTranscriptLanguages": [
    "ar",
    "bn",
    "zh",
    "zh-CN",
    "zh-TW",
    "cs"
  ],
  "hasTranscript": true,
  "transcript": "[Submit subtitle corrections at criblate.com] Hey everyone! If I had to choose just one topic that makes all of the others in linear algebra start to click, and…",
  "wordCount": 1803,
  "description": "…",
  "segments": [
    {
      "start": 0.0,
      "duration": 4.2,
      "text": "(first caption line)"
    },
    "…"
  ]
}

What can you do with YouTube transcripts data?

• AI & RAG: feed video knowledge into chatbots, summaries, embeddings and agents.
• Content & SEO: repurpose videos into articles, find quotes, analyze competitor channels.
• Research & monitoring: track what creators say about brands, products or topics.
• Education: build searchable lecture and tutorial libraries.

How much does it cost?

Pay per video returned, plus a negligible start fee per run. Turn on Skip videos without a transcript to pay only for videos that have captions.

Limits you should know about

• Only public videos are processed. Private, deleted and members-only videos are skipped.
• Transcripts are YouTube's own captions (manual or auto-generated); videos with captions disabled have none.
• translateTo requests YouTube's automatic caption translation. YouTube often doesn't serve it to automated requests; when that happens you get the original-language transcript and translationFailed: true.
• publishDate and category can occasionally be null.
• If something breaks after a YouTube change, open an issue and it will be fixed quickly.

Pricing — what you pay per video

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing: no monthly rental, you pay for the results you get. Prices per 1,000 results by Apify plan:

Event	Free plan	Bronze	Silver	Gold+
video — One video with its transcript and data saved to the dataset	$4.00	$3.60	$3.40	$3.20

There is also a small start fee of $0.00005 per GB of memory ($0.00005 per run at the default 1 GB). Platform compute is included in the price — you are not billed separately for run time. Set a maximum total charge on the run if you want a hard cap, and use the input limits to control how much is fetched. The current prices are always on the Pricing tab.

Tips

• Start with a small maxResults (say 20) to check the output, then raise it — you only pay per result.
• Keep the default proxy setting — it is only used as a fallback when a direct request is blocked.
• Rows the Actor cannot read are logged and skipped, never charged — check the run log if a count looks low.

Automate & schedule

Run this Actor on autopilot and pull results into your own stack:

• Apify API — start runs, fetch datasets and manage schedules over REST.
• apify-client for JavaScript and apify-client for Python — official SDKs.
• Schedules — run it on a cron to keep your data fresh.
• Webhooks — trigger downstream actions the moment a run finishes.

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('tindacloud/youtube-transcripts').call({
    "videos": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"
    ],
    "channelTab": "videos",
    "maxVideosPerSource": 20,
    "preferredLanguages": [
        "en"
    ],
    "includeTimestamps": true,
    "includePublishDate": true,
    "maxResults": 500
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} records`);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("MY_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("tindacloud/youtube-transcripts").call(run_input={
    "videos": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"
    ],
    "channelTab": "videos",
    "maxVideosPerSource": 20,
    "preferredLanguages": [
        "en"
    ],
    "includeTimestamps": True,
    "includePublishDate": True,
    "maxResults": 500
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

cURL — run and get the results in one request:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/tindacloud~youtube-transcripts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=MY_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"], "channelTab": "videos", "maxVideosPerSource": 20, "preferredLanguages": ["en"], "includeTimestamps": true, "includePublishDate": true, "maxResults": 500}'

Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to thousands of apps — no code required:

• Make — multi-step automation scenarios.
• Zapier — push new records straight into your CRM or sheet.
• n8n — self-hosted workflows.
• Slack — get notified when a run finishes or finds something new.
• Google Drive / Sheets — auto-export every run to a spreadsheet.
• Airbyte — pipe results into your data warehouse.
• GitHub — trigger runs from commits or releases.
• Webhooks — call your own endpoint when a run succeeds or fails.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

The output is clean, LLM-ready JSON. Call this Actor from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any agent framework through the Apify MCP server — ask your assistant to "get the transcripts of these 10 videos and summarize each one" and let it run this Actor for you.

Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This Actor is agent-ready — AI agents can discover it, run it and pay for it on their own. It uses pay-per-event pricing and limited permissions, so it qualifies for Apify's agentic payments:

• x402 — an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay in USDC through the Apify MCP server — no Apify account needed.
• Skyfire — agent-to-service payments with pre-funded Skyfire tokens.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool or data pipeline? This Actor is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

Ready-made examples

Open one, change the fields, press Start — nothing to configure:

• Get the transcript of a YouTube video
• Download transcripts of a whole YouTube channel
• Get subtitles from a YouTube playlist
• Translate YouTube transcripts to another language

Frequently asked questions about scraping YouTube transcripts

Do I need an API key or a login?

No. Paste your input, press Start. There is nothing to connect and no account on the target site to create.

How do I export the results?

Every run produces a dataset you can download as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or read through the Apify API from your own code. You can also connect it to Make, Zapier or n8n.

Can I run this on a schedule?

Yes. Apify schedules run it every hour, day or week without you being there. Each run is independent, so a schedule gives you a fresh snapshot every time.

Can I call it from Python or JavaScript?

Yes — the Apify API runs any Actor and returns the dataset, and the official Python and JavaScript clients wrap it in a few lines. AI agents can call it too, through Apify's MCP server.

What does it cost?

You pay per result, not per hour. Filters are applied before anything is charged, so narrowing the input directly lowers the bill. Pages that cannot be read are reported in the log and never charged.

Is this data public?

Everything collected here is what YouTube shows to anyone without logging in. Check the target site's terms and the rules that apply to you before using the data commercially.

Related scrapers

Other scrapers from the same maker, built the same way — no browser where it isn't needed, one flat price per result:

• YouTube Comments Scraper
• Threads Scraper
• Google News Scraper
• Website Contact & Email Scraper

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google LLC. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. "YouTube" is named here only in a descriptive sense — to identify the publicly available website this Actor reads. It collects only publicly available information that anyone can see without logging in; you are responsible for making sure your use of the data complies with applicable laws, regulations and the terms of the source website.