Podcast Transcript & Audio to Text - Spotify, Apple, RSS, MP3

Podcast transcription and audio to text with AI. Type a podcast name, or paste a Spotify, Apple Podcasts or RSS link, and the newest episodes are transcribed, or give direct links to MP3, M4A, WAV or video files. Long episodes are split and transcribed in parallel, so a one-hour episode takes minutes. Get clean transcripts as JSON, CSV or Excel, with optional timestamps and SRT/WebVTT subtitles, or pull them into your app through the API.

What can this podcast transcript tool do?

• Transcribe the newest episodes of any public podcast from just its name, a Spotify or Apple Podcasts link, or its RSS feed
• Transcribe any audio or video file from a direct URL (.mp3, .m4a, .aac, .wav, .ogg, .flac, .mp4, .webm)
• Handle long recordings: audio is cut into pieces, transcribed in parallel and joined back with correct timestamps
• Return the show, episode title, publish date, transcript, word count and duration for every episode
• Optionally return timestamped segments, the detected language and ready-to-use SRT and WebVTT subtitles
• Stop exactly at the spending limit you set for a run, and charge nothing for files that cannot be downloaded

Who uses podcast transcription?

• Content teams turning episodes into show notes, blog posts, newsletters and social clips
• Researchers and analysts searching what was said across many episodes or shows
• Developers and AI agents feeding transcripts into summarisers, search indexes or RAG pipelines
• Accessibility work that needs a text version of audio

How to transcribe a podcast

1. Add one or more podcasts: a name such as Planet Money, a Spotify show link such as https://open.spotify.com/show/79CkJF3UJTHFV8Dse3Oy0P, an Apple Podcasts link, or an RSS feed URL.
2. Set how many of the newest episodes to transcribe per feed, and optionally a start date.
3. Or add direct audio file URLs instead of (or next to) feeds.
4. Click Start. Each episode appears in the dataset as soon as it is done.

Spotify podcast transcript generator

Spotify does not offer a transcript download for most shows. Paste the show's Spotify link (https://open.spotify.com/show/...) and this Actor finds the same show's public RSS feed and transcribes its newest episodes. It works for every Spotify podcast that is also published outside Spotify, which is most of them; Spotify exclusives are not supported.

Apple Podcasts transcript, MP3 to text and audio to text

• Apple Podcasts: paste the show link from podcasts.apple.com.
• By name: type the podcast name, for example Planet Money.
• MP3 to text / WAV to text / M4A to text: paste a direct link to any audio file, such as an interview, lecture, meeting recording or voice memo that is hosted online.

Every transcript comes as clean text, and with timestamps enabled also as SRT and WebVTT subtitles.

Input example

{
  "feeds": ["Planet Money", "https://open.spotify.com/show/79CkJF3UJTHFV8Dse3Oy0P", "https://feeds.npr.org/500005/podcast.xml"],
  "maxEpisodesPerFeed": 3,
  "onlyEpisodesNewerThan": "2026-10-01",
  "urls": ["https://example.com/recordings/interview.mp3"],
  "includeTimestamps": false,
  "maxDurationMinutes": 120
}

Output

Field	Description
show, episodeTitle, postedAt	Podcast name, episode title and publish date (feed episodes)
text, wordCount, durationSec	Transcript, its length, and audio length in seconds
language, segments, srt, vtt	Present when timestamps are enabled
episodeUrl, audioUrl, feedUrl	Where the episode came from
status	succeeded, no_speech, no_audio, failed or skipped
errorCode, errorMessage	Why a file was not transcribed
charged	Whether the item was billed

Pricing

Pay per event, no subscription: $0.005 per started minute of audio (the first minute is the "audio transcribed" event, each further started minute is an "additional minute"). Paid Apify plans get lower prices (Bronze $0.0048, Silver $0.0046, Gold $0.0045 per minute). A 30-minute episode costs $0.15 on the free plan.

Not charged: invalid links, feeds that cannot be read, and files that cannot be downloaded or have no audio. Set Maximum minutes per episode or file to cap the cost of each episode; set a maximum charge for the run and the Actor never exceeds it.

Use it from the API and AI agents

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("tracefetch/podcast-transcript").call(
    run_input={"feeds": ["https://feeds.npr.org/500005/podcast.xml"], "maxEpisodesPerFeed": 1}
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["episodeTitle"], item["text"][:200])

Works with schedules (for example, transcribe new episodes every morning), webhooks, Make, Zapier and n8n. AI agents connected to the Apify MCP server can find and call it.

Limits and FAQ

• Public feeds and files only. Spotify links work for shows that also publish a public RSS feed (most do); Spotify-exclusive, private or paywalled audio is not supported.
• A podcast name is matched against the Apple Podcasts directory; if no show matches, you get a free error row, never a guess.
• Audio longer than Maximum minutes per episode or file (default 120) is cut at that length.
• Speaker names are not identified; the transcript is continuous text (with segment times when timestamps are on).
• Transcription uses OpenAI speech-to-text models and supports most major languages; setting the language helps on short or noisy recordings.