YouTube Transcript Scraper – Subtitles, Captions & Playlists in Bulk

Extract the transcript of any YouTube video – manually created subtitles or auto-generated captions – with timestamps, as plain text, SRT, WebVTT or JSON segments. Feed video URLs, Shorts, bare video IDs or whole playlists, choose your preferred languages or let YouTube auto-translate the transcript into any language, and get video metadata (title, channel, duration, views, publish date, keywords) in the same item.

Reliable and cheap: $3 per 1,000 videos, no YouTube API key, no quotas.

Output

{
  "videoId": "aircAruvnKk",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk",
  "title": "But what is a neural network? | Deep learning chapter 1",
  "channelName": "3Blue1Brown", "channelId": "UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw",
  "durationSeconds": 1104, "viewCount": 18923411, "publishDate": "2017-10-05",
  "language": "en", "languageName": "English", "isAutoGenerated": false, "translatedTo": null,
  "availableLanguages": [ { "language": "en", "name": "English", "autoGenerated": false, "translatable": true }, { "language": "de", "name": "German", "autoGenerated": false } ],
  "segmentCount": 304, "wordCount": 3120,
  "text": "Here is a 28 by 28 pixel image …",
  "segments": [ { "start": 4.2, "duration": 3.1, "text": "Here is a 28 by 28 pixel image" }, … ],
  "srt": "1\n00:00:04,200 --> 00:00:07,300\nHere is a …"
}

Videos without captions or with a playability problem (private, age-restricted, removed) are returned with an error field (NO_CAPTIONS, NO_MATCHING_LANGUAGE, LOGIN_REQUIRED, …) and are not charged.

Input

Field	Description
videoUrls	Video URLs, Shorts, youtu.be links, embed URLs, bare IDs or playlist URLs (…/playlist?list=…).
languages	Preferred language codes in order (en, de, es, …). Manual captions are preferred over auto-generated ones.
fallbackToAnyLanguage	If no preferred language exists, use the first available track (default on).
translateTo	Let YouTube translate the transcript into this language (e.g. en).
outputFormats	text, segments, srt, vtt – pick any combination.
includeMetadata	Title, description, channel, duration, views, publish date, keywords, thumbnail, category.
maxVideosPerPlaylist	Cap when expanding playlists.
concurrency	Parallel videos (default 5).
proxyConfiguration	Optional. The actor runs without proxies and automatically switches to Apify residential proxy only for videos where YouTube asks for a sign-in.

Use cases

• AI / LLM pipelines – summarize, translate, answer questions over video content, build RAG knowledge bases from channels and playlists.
• Content repurposing – turn videos into blog posts, newsletters, social posts, show notes.
• Research & monitoring – keyword search across transcripts, sentiment, competitor content analysis.
• Accessibility & localization – SRT/VTT subtitle files in the original or translated language.

Pricing

$0.003 per transcript returned. Videos without transcript are free.

Integrations

Run on schedule or via API/SDK; export JSON, CSV, Excel; connect to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n, LangChain, LlamaIndex; use as an MCP tool from Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT.

Ready-made examples

One click, input already filled in:

• Convert a YouTube video to a text transcript
• Download transcripts for a whole YouTube playlist
• Download YouTube subtitles as SRT or VTT
• Get an English transcript of a non-English YouTube video
• Collect YouTube transcripts for RAG and LLM apps

FAQ

Does this work for videos without subtitles?

Only if YouTube generated automatic captions (most videos in major languages). Videos with no captions at all return an error field and are not charged.

Can I get the transcript in a different language?

Yes. translateTo uses YouTube's own translation of the caption track; languages picks the preferred source track.

Which formats are supported?

Plain text, timestamped segments (JSON), srt and vtt – any combination in one run.

Can I process a whole channel?

Paste the channel's playlist URL (the 'uploads' playlist or any playlist) or pipe URLs from the YouTube Scraper.

Is this good for RAG / LLM apps?

That is the main use. You get clean text plus metadata per video, and the Apify MCP server exposes the actor as a tool for agents.

What does it cost?

$3 per 1,000 transcripts; failed videos are free.

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