# TED Talk Transcript Scraper — TXT, SRT & VTT (No Login) (`scrapersdelight/ted-transcript-scraper`) Actor

Extract any TED Talk's transcript via TED's own public API — no login, no ASR. Full text, timestamped segments & SRT/VTT in any available language, plus speaker, views, topics and TED's AI takeaway. Point it at talk URLs or a topic/speaker page. $2 per 1,000 talks.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/scrapersdelight/ted-transcript-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Scrapers Delight](https://apify.com/scrapersdelight) (community)
- **Categories:** Videos, AI, Automation
- **Stats:** 5 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.00 / 1,000 per record returneds

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/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#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

## 🎤 TED Talk Transcript Scraper — TXT, SRT, VTT

**Get any TED Talk's transcript instantly — no login, no AI transcription. TED publishes a transcript for every talk in dozens of languages, and this actor reads it straight from TED's own API: full text, timestamped segments, and ready-to-use SRT/VTT — plus the speaker, view count, topics, and TED's AI takeaway. Point it at talk URLs or a whole TED topic/speaker page.**

Because the transcript already exists, there's no speech-to-text compute — it's fast and cheap.

***

### What does it do?

For each TED talk you give it (by URL or harvested from a TED page), it returns:

- 📝 **Full transcript** (plain text) — always included
- ⏲️ **Timestamped segments** — `{start, end, text}`
- 🎬 **SRT / VTT subtitles** — ready for any editor
- 🎤 **Speaker, duration, view count, recorded/published dates**
- 🏷️ **Topics** + 💡 **TED's AI takeaway headline**
- 🌍 Any available **language**

No ASR, no API key — it reads TED's published transcript.

***

### What data does it extract?

For every talk:

- 🆔 `talk_id`, `slug`, 🔗 `url`, 🏷️ `title`
- 🎤 `speaker`, ⏱️ `duration_sec`, 👁️ `views`, 📅 `recorded_on`, `published_at`
- 🏷️ `topics[]`, 💡 `takeaway_headline`, 📝 `description`
- 🌍 `language`, 📄 `transcript`, ⏲️ `segments[]`, 🎬 `srt`, `vtt`, `segment_count`
- ✨ `is_new` (monitor), 🕒 `scraped_at`

***

### Who is it for?

- ✍️ **Writers & content teams** repurposing talks into articles, quotes, and summaries.
- 🤖 **AI / RAG dataset builders** assembling clean, multilingual speech text.
- 🔎 **Researchers & educators** searching talk content and citing passages.
- 🌍 **Localization teams** pulling transcripts across languages.

***

### How to use it (step by step)

1. Click **Try for free**.
2. Paste one or more **talk URLs** (e.g. `https://www.ted.com/talks/{slug}`) — or a **TED topic/speaker page URL**.
3. *(Optional)* set a **language** and extra **formats** (`srt`, `vtt`, `segments`).
4. Click **Start**, then open the **Dataset** tab to view/export.
5. *(Optional)* set **monitorMode** + a **pageUrl** + a **Schedule** to capture new talks automatically.

#### Quick start

```json
{ "talkUrls": ["https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready"], "transcriptFormats": ["txt", "srt"] }
```

***

### Input

| Field | What it does |
|-------|--------------|
| `talkUrls` | TED talk URLs / slugs |
| `pageUrl` | a TED topic/speaker/playlist page to harvest talk links from |
| `language` | transcript language code (default `en`) |
| `transcriptFormats` | `txt` · `segments` · `srt` · `vtt` |
| `includeTakeaways` | add topics, description, and TED's AI takeaway |
| `maxTalks` | hard cap per run (0 = unlimited) |
| `monitorMode`, `alertOnNewTalk` | recurring new-talk watcher + alerts |
| `webhookUrl`, `slackWebhookUrl`, `emailRecipients` | alert channels |
| `proxyConfiguration`, `requestConcurrency` | proxy + parallelism |

***

### Output

Each talk is one dataset record (fields above). Export to **JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or RSS**, or fetch via the **Apify API**.

***

### How much does it cost?

Pay-per-event — and with **no transcription compute**, it's cheap:

| Event | What it covers | Suggested price |
|-------|----------------|-----------------|
| `lot-scraped` | each talk returned | ~$0.003 / talk |
| `lot-detail-enriched` | each transcript fetched | ~$0.003 / talk |
| `monitor-run-completed` | each scheduled watch run | ~$0.05 / run |
| `new-lot-detected` | each new talk | ~$0.02 / talk |
| `alert-delivered` | each Slack/email/webhook push | ~$0.005 / alert |

*(Final per-event prices are set on the actor's pricing page.)*

***

### How does it work without AI transcription?

TED publishes a human/edited transcript for each talk, in many languages, and exposes it through a public API. This actor reads that existing transcript — it does **not** run speech-to-text, so there's no GPU/compute cost and results are instant.

***

### Is it legal to scrape TED transcripts?

TED talks and their transcripts are published publicly, and TED talks are generally released under a **Creative Commons (BY–NC–ND)** license. The output is talk content and public stats, not personal data. Scraping public data is generally legal, but **you are responsible for your use — review TED's Terms of Service and the talks' Creative Commons license, and attribute/limit redistribution accordingly.**

***

### FAQ

**Which languages?**
Whatever TED offers for the talk (often dozens). Set `language`; talks without that language are flagged.

**Is there a Whisper/ASR step?**
No — it reads TED's own transcript, so it's fast and cheap.

**Can I get subtitles?**
Yes — add `srt` and/or `vtt` to `transcriptFormats`.

**Can I grab a whole topic or speaker's talks?**
Yes — set `pageUrl` to a TED topic/speaker page and the actor harvests the talk links. Add `monitorMode` to catch new talks.

**How do I export?**
JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or RSS from the Dataset tab, or via the Apify API.

***

### Feedback

Want full-playlist crawling, speaker bios, or another language default? Open an issue on the actor.

# Actor input Schema

## `talkUrls` (type: `array`):

TED talks to transcribe — full https://www.ted.com/talks/{slug} URLs or bare slugs (e.g. bill\_gates\_the\_next\_outbreak\_we\_re\_not\_ready).

## `pageUrl` (type: `string`):

Any TED page that lists talks — a topic, speaker, or playlist page. The actor harvests every /talks/{slug} link it finds. Great with monitor mode to watch a topic for new talks.

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

Language code for the transcript (e.g. en, es, fr, zh-cn). TED offers many translations; if a talk has no transcript in this language the row is flagged.

## `transcriptFormats` (type: `array`):

Which transcript representations to include. Plain text is always included.

## `includeTakeaways` (type: `boolean`):

Add the talk's topics, description, and TED's AI-generated takeaway headline to each record.

## `maxTalks` (type: `integer`):

Hard cap on talks this run (0 = unlimited).

## `monitorMode` (type: `boolean`):

Recurring watcher: diff against the prior run's seen talks (per page) and output/alert ONLY new talks. Pair with a pageUrl + an Apify Schedule.

## `alertOnNewTalk` (type: `boolean`):

In monitor mode, deliver an alert for each new talk via the channels below.

## `webhookUrl` (type: `string`):

POST endpoint for new-talk alert payloads.

## `slackWebhookUrl` (type: `string`):

Slack incoming-webhook URL for formatted cards.

## `emailRecipients` (type: `array`):

Emails for the new-talk digest (via apify/send-mail).

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

Proxy settings. Datacenter rotation is plenty.

## `requestConcurrency` (type: `integer`):

Max parallel talk fetches.

## `diagnose` (type: `boolean`):

Dev only. Dumps the raw talk-page HTML + logs parsed metadata + transcript, then exits.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "talkUrls": [
    "https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready"
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "transcriptFormats": [
    "txt"
  ],
  "includeTakeaways": true,
  "maxTalks": 0,
  "monitorMode": false,
  "alertOnNewTalk": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  },
  "requestConcurrency": 5,
  "diagnose": false
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `transcripts` (type: `string`):

The dataset of TED talk transcripts (one item per talk).

# 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 = {
    "talkUrls": [
        "https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("scrapersdelight/ted-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 = { "talkUrls": ["https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("scrapersdelight/ted-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 '{
  "talkUrls": [
    "https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready"
  ]
}' |
apify call scrapersdelight/ted-transcript-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,scrapersdelight/ted-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/rhHqO8hqnifMvFTsJ/builds/QsNMKMGdHkS16IM1V/openapi.json