Instagram Transcript Scraper – Reels & Video to Text, AI

By TubeText Labs – see all our tools at the end of this page.

Turn Instagram Reels into clean text for ChatGPT, Claude, RAG pipelines, content repurposing, hook research and competitor monitoring. Paste reel links or @usernames – for a profile, its latest public reels are transcribed. Works as an Instagram audio-to-text / speech-to-text tool: every reel's speech is transcribed with Whisper AI.

Why this one

• 👤 Profiles in, transcripts out – give @username (or a profile link) and set how many reels you want. Newest first, with an optional date filter and "skip pinned".
• 🔁 Only new reels – turn on Only new reels and schedule the Actor: each run transcribes just what a creator posted since last time.
• 💸 Pay only for results – music-only reels, private or deleted reels and failed downloads are free.
• 🔇 No junk transcripts – Whisper "Thank you" loops, song-only audio and sound-effect clips are detected and not charged. Songs are detected after transcription and returned as free lyrics rows, so you only pay for real speech.
• 🎣 Hook included – a hook field with the opening line (first ~3 seconds), ready for hook and script research.
• 🔤 On-screen text (optional) – turn on includeOnScreenText and an AI vision model reads the captions, titles and stickers shown in the reel, one line each, in order. Works on music-only reels too (e.g. recipe reels that only show ingredient names). Adds about 5–10 s per reel; brand logos sometimes appear as a line.
• 📊 Reel stats – creator, caption, hashtags, posting time, plays (profile inputs), likes, comments, duration, follower count.
• 🧠 AI-ready output – plain text, timestamped sentences, SRT subtitles, raw segments and optional RAG chunks.
• 🔓 No login, no cookies – only public pages are used.

Input example

{
  "urls": [
    "@natgeo",
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeK0nPogqrS/"
  ],
  "maxReelsPerProfile": 20,
  "onlyReelsNewerThan": "30 days",
  "skipAlreadyScraped": false
}

If you leave out maxReelsPerProfile (for example when calling the API), 20 reels per profile are transcribed.

Accepted inputs: reel links (instagram.com/reel/…, /p/…), share links (instagram.com/share/…), profile links (instagram.com/natgeo, …/natgeo/reels/) and @usernames. Mix them freely. Already scraping Instagram with another Actor? Pass its dataset as datasetId (with datasetSortBy and maxVideosFromDataset) and the reels in it are transcribed.

Output example

Real output (shortened) for @natgeo with Max reels per profile = 3:

{
  "input": "@natgeo",
  "shortcode": "DeNJLoOksoN",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeNJLoOksoN/",
  "ownerUsername": "natgeo",
  "ownerFullName": "National Geographic",
  "caption": "The shoebill’s prehistoric appearance makes it unique among living birds…",
  "hashtags": [],
  "postedAt": "2026-10-07T19:47:57Z",
  "durationSeconds": 105.2,
  "playCount": 415254,
  "likeCount": 42246,
  "commentCount": 171,
  "profileUsername": "natgeo",
  "pinned": false,
  "followerCount": 268419899,
  "status": "ok",
  "language": "en",
  "hook": "Did you know shoebills attack their own siblings?",
  "transcript": "Did you know shoebills attack their own siblings? Five surprising facts about the shoebill. They practice sibilicide. Shoebills typically lay two to three eggs per clutch…",
  "timestampedText": "[00:00] Did you know shoebills attack their own siblings? …",
  "wordCount": 254,
  "billedExtraMinutes": 0
}

status is ok, no_speech (music or sound effects only – free), skipped (no audio track, private, deleted or longer than your limit – free), no_reels or error (free). Also profile_not_found_or_unavailable (the username doesn't exist or isn't public – returned in seconds, free) and no_new_reels (with "only new reels" on and nothing new since the last run – free), and lyrics (the audio is a song, not speech – the song text is returned in a lyrics field, free).

ownerUsername is the reel's author; on collab reels it can be the co-author, so use profileUsername to group by the profile you asked for.

Pricing

Pay per event:

• $6.00 per 1,000 reels (cheaper on higher Apify plans: down to $4.50). Each reel includes its first 3 minutes of audio – almost every reel is shorter.
• $0.003 per extra started minute for reels longer than 3 minutes.
• +$0.002 per reel with on-screen text when you turn it on, charged only when text is found.
• Music-only, private, deleted and failed reels are free.

Example: 1,000 typical reels (under 3 minutes) ≈ $6.00, minus the music-only ones.

Use it from your tools

• API / Python: client.actor("tubetext/instagram-reels-transcript").call(run_input={"urls": ["@natgeo"], "maxReelsPerProfile": 20}), then read the default dataset.
• n8n / Make / Zapier: use the Apify integration, run this Actor and map the transcript and hook fields.
• Monitoring: schedule a run with your creator list and Only new reels on, then push new rows to Google Sheets, Notion or Slack.

Ready-made examples

• Instagram Reels to Text
• All Reels of an Instagram Profile to Text
• Instagram Video to Text and SRT
• Instagram Reels Hooks Swipe File
• Track New Reels Daily
• Instagram Reels On-Screen Text
• Instagram Reels for ChatGPT
• Instagram Reels to SRT
• Competitor Reels Research
• Reels Since a Date to Text

TubeText Labs tools

TubeText Labs builds 9 pay-per-result Apify Actors for video, social and e-commerce data – no login, JSON/CSV/Excel output, and ready for ChatGPT and Claude (Apify MCP), n8n, Make and Zapier. All tools: apify.com/tubetext

Transcripts

• YouTube Transcript Scraper – videos, Shorts, playlists and whole channels to text; Whisper AI when there are no captions
• TikTok Transcript Scraper – TikTok captions plus Whisper AI, SRT and timestamps
• Instagram Reels Transcript (this tool) – reel links or @usernames to text with Whisper AI

Video & ad analysis

• Video Breakdown AI – hook analysis, shot list, cut pacing, products shown and script of any TikTok, Reel or YouTube video
• Video Ad Analyzer – competitors' YouTube video ads by brand or domain (Google Ads Transparency), torn down by AI

Channel analytics

• YouTube Channel Analytics – subscribers, recent video performance, Social Blade grade, ranks and estimated earnings

E-commerce & travel

• TikTok Shop Product Scraper – US TikTok Shop prices, items sold, stock per SKU and shop stats
• AliExpress Search Scraper – AliExpress search results by keyword: price, items sold, rating, shipping, badges
• Google Hotels Scraper – hotel prices for any destination and dates, per booking site and as a 90-day price calendar

FAQ

How many reels can I get from a profile? Set Max reels per profile to any number up to 1,000 (default 20). Large profiles take longer; our production tests went up to 40 reels per profile. Reels are read from the profile's public Reels tab, newest first; pinned reels come first unless you skip them.

Why did a reel return no_speech? It contains only music or sound effects. These are never charged.

Why did a reel come back as lyrics? Its audio is a song rather than someone talking. You still get the song text in the lyrics field, but the row isn't charged. When it's unclear, the reel is treated as speech.

Private accounts? Not supported – only public profiles and reels. Private accounts return an error row for free.

Which languages? Whisper detects the spoken language automatically (90+ languages, including Spanish, Japanese and Chinese); the transcript is in the original language.

How fast is it? About 15 reels per minute with default settings – 100 reels usually take under 10 minutes, including reading the profiles. Speed varies with Instagram's rate limits.

Is this legal? The Actor only reads publicly available pages, without logging in, and does not collect emails, phone numbers or comments. You are responsible for how you use the data (copyright, privacy and Instagram's terms).

Can I cap what a run costs? Yes – set Maximum cost per run in the run options. The run stops cleanly when the next item would go over it: you are never charged more, and you get a clear "stopped at your limit" status message.

What happens if a big run hits the time limit? It stops cleanly shortly before the limit: everything finished so far is delivered, the run ends as succeeded, and the status message says how many items weren't started. Raise the run timeout, or run again with Only new turned on to continue where it stopped.

Am I charged if a reel fails? No. Private, deleted and failed reels, and music-only reels, come back with a status and are not charged – you only pay for reels that were actually transcribed.