# Instagram Reels Transcript Scraper — real Whisper ASR (`x402farm/instagram-transcript-scraper`) Actor

Transcribes the actual audio of Instagram Reels with Whisper large-v3. Any language, no captions needed. $0.004 per minute.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/x402farm/instagram-transcript-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Laurent Halbrun](https://apify.com/x402farm) (community)
- **Categories:** Videos, Social media, AI
- **Stats:** 1 total users, 1 monthly users, 80.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$4.00 / 1,000 minute of audio transcribeds

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/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
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.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## 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.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Instagram Reels Transcript & Subtitles — SRT & VTT

Transcribes the **actual audio** of Instagram Reels with Whisper large-v3,
and returns plain text, timestamped segments and ready-to-use SRT and VTT
subtitles.

Instagram publishes no caption track, so tools that scrape captions return
nothing. This one downloads the audio and runs speech recognition on it.

Most public Reels work without any credentials. If a specific post is refused,
pass cookies from a logged-in browser session in `instagramCookies`.
otherwise. This one downloads the audio and runs speech recognition on it, so it
behaves the same whether captions exist or not.

### What it handles that caption-readers don't

- **Videos with no subtitles at all** — the majority of TikTok and Instagram.
- **TikTok and Instagram**, not just YouTube.
- **Any language**, auto-detected, including videos whose captions are only
  available in one language.
- **Auto-generated captions you don't trust** — this reads the audio directly.

### Pricing

**$0.004 per minute of audio transcribed.** Rounded up to the minute.

That is roughly 6× cheaper than other actors that run real speech recognition
(they charge $0.025–$0.05 per minute), because transcription runs on dedicated
GPUs instead of inside the Actor.

You are **not charged** when there is nothing to transcribe — a silent video, a
photo post, or a carousel returns a labelled row at no cost.

### Input

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@nasa/video/7670721000471891214",
    "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/reel/Dbn-XJhk0_-/",
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"
  ],
  "language": null,
  "includeSegments": true,
  "maxDurationSeconds": 3600
}
```

| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `urls` | Video URLs. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. |
| `language` | ISO code (`en`, `fr`, `es`…). Leave empty to auto-detect — detection is reliable and free. |
| `includeSegments` | Sentence-level segments with start/end times. |
| `maxDurationSeconds` | Skip anything longer. Guards against transcribing a multi-hour stream by accident. |
| `instagramCookies` | **Instagram only.** See below. |

#### Instagram requires a session

Instagram returns an empty media response to anonymous requests — every public
post, no exceptions. Export cookies from a logged-in browser (Netscape format)
and pass them in `instagramCookies`. They are written to a temporary file and
deleted when the run ends; they are never stored.

YouTube and TikTok need no credentials.

### Output

```json
{
  "url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@nasa/video/7670721000471891214",
  "platform": "tiktok",
  "videoId": "7670721000471891214",
  "title": "There's nothing like watching humanity leave Earth.",
  "uploader": "nasa",
  "durationSeconds": 29.93,
  "language": "en",
  "languageConfidence": 0.962,
  "transcript": "Booster ignition and lift off, the crew of Artemis 2 now bound for the moon…",
  "segments": [{ "debut": 0.0, "fin": 4.2, "texte": "Booster ignition and lift off" }],
  "source": "audio-asr",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-06T04:10:18.295Z"
}
```

`source` is always `audio-asr` — it is there so you can verify the text came
from speech recognition rather than from a caption file.

Rows that could not be transcribed carry `errorType`:

| `errorType` | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `no_audio_track` | Silent video, or the post is a photo / carousel. Not charged. |
| `extraction_failed` | The video could not be downloaded — private, deleted, or region-locked. |

### Notes

Long videos are fine: a 19-minute YouTube video returns 257 timestamped
segments. Very long recordings are limited by `maxDurationSeconds`, which you
can raise.

Residential proxies are recommended for TikTok and Instagram, which rate-limit
datacenter IP ranges.

# Actor input Schema

## `urls` (type: `array`):

Instagram video URLs. The audio is transcribed with Whisper — captions are never used, so videos with no subtitles work exactly the same. YouTube, TikTok and Instagram URLs are all accepted.

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

ISO code such as en, fr, es. Leave empty to auto-detect — detection is reliable and costs nothing extra.

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

Return sentence-level segments with start/end times, in addition to the full text.

## `maxDurationSeconds` (type: `integer`):

Guard against accidentally transcribing a multi-hour stream.

## `instagramCookies` (type: `string`):

Required for Instagram only: Instagram returns an empty media response to anonymous requests. Export cookies from a logged-in browser session. Stored in a temporary file and deleted at the end of the run.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Leave off unless you hit rate limits. Measured 2026-08-06: TikTok BLOCKS Apify's residential proxy pool (those IPs are burned) and demands a login, while it works fine from Apify's own datacenter IPs. Residential only helps if you bring your own clean IPs.

## `groqModel` (type: `string`):

Internal — whisper-large-v3-turbo (fast, cheap) or whisper-large-v3 (slightly better, 2.8x the price).

## `transcriptionEndpoints` (type: `array`):

Internal — GPU transcription services. Several entries enable parallel processing and automatic failover: a node that fails twice in a row is taken out of rotation for 60 s, then retried.

## `concurrencyPerEndpoint` (type: `integer`):

Internal — in-flight transcriptions per GPU. Raising it past what the card can hold only adds latency, not throughput.

## `transcriptionEndpoint` (type: `string`):

Internal — kept for single-GPU setups. Ignored when transcriptionEndpoints is set.

## `transcriptionToken` (type: `string`):

Internal — bearer token for the transcription service.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/reel/Dbn-XJhk0_-/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/reel/DbluoPsmhmo/"
  ],
  "includeSegments": true,
  "maxDurationSeconds": 3600,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  },
  "groqModel": "whisper-large-v3-turbo",
  "concurrencyPerEndpoint": 2
}
```

# 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 = {
    "urls": [
        "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/reel/Dbn-XJhk0_-/",
        "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/reel/DbluoPsmhmo/"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("x402farm/instagram-transcript-scraper").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 = { "urls": [
        "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/reel/Dbn-XJhk0_-/",
        "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/reel/DbluoPsmhmo/",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("x402farm/instagram-transcript-scraper").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 '{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/reel/Dbn-XJhk0_-/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/reel/DbluoPsmhmo/"
  ]
}' |
apify call x402farm/instagram-transcript-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,x402farm/instagram-transcript-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

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/gEAqbw2cWUcU4kX76/builds/SiWz7c6dkreH3aahh/openapi.json