YouTube Transcript Scraper

Extract transcripts and captions from YouTube videos via InnerTube API. Support for auto-generated and manual captions in multiple languages. Get timestamped text segments.

Use cases

• Turn videos into searchable text for a RAG pipeline
• Repurpose video content into blog posts or summaries
• Generate subtitles or translations from existing captions
• Analyse what competitors actually say in their videos
• Build a lecture or podcast transcript archive

Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
videoUrls	array	Yes	["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"]	List of YouTube video URLs or video IDs to extract transcripts from.
language	string	No	"en"	Preferred language code for captions (e.g., 'en', 'ja', 'es'). Falls back to any available language if not found.
includeAutoGenerated	boolean	No	true	Whether to include auto-generated captions when manual captions are not available.

Example input

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "includeAutoGenerated": true
}

Output

Each dataset item has the following shape:

Field	Type
videoId	string
videoUrl	string
title	string
language	string
isAutoGenerated	boolean
segments	array of {start, duration, text}
fullTranscript	string
scrapedAt	string

Results are exportable from Apify Console or the API as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML.

How to run it

In Apify Console — open the Actor, fill in the input form, click Start, then download the results from the Dataset tab.

With the JavaScript client

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('cloud9_ai/youtube-transcript-scraper').call({
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "includeAutoGenerated": true
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

With the Python client

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')

run = client.actor('cloud9_ai/youtube-transcript-scraper').call(run_input={
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "includeAutoGenerated": True
})

for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(item)

With the API — POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cloud9_ai~youtube-transcript-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN with the input JSON as the body.

Notes and limits

• No API key, account, or login is needed — just the input above.
• Requests to the source are paced to stay inside its rate limits.
• Only publicly available data is collected. How you use the output is your responsibility, including the source's terms of use and any applicable data-protection law.

Support

Found a bug, or need a field that isn't in the output? Open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor in Apify Console. Issues there are read and answered.

License

Apache-2.0