Youtube Transcript Scraper

Pricing

Rating

Developer

Actor stats

Categories

Share

Fetch transcripts and captions from YouTube videos using Apify Proxy with session management and automatic retry logic.

Input

Video Object

Each video in the videos array has:

Example Input

{
"videos":[
{
"url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
"languages":["en"]
},
{
"url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0",
"languages":["ko","en"]
},
{
"url":"https://www.youtube.com/shorts/97IwoIqBCZk",
"languages":["en"]
},
{
"url":"https://youtu.be/kJQP7kiw5Fk",
"languages":["es","en"]
}
],
"includeTimestamps":true
}

Supported URL Formats

• Regular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• Shorts: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID
• Short link: https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID

Supported Languages

The actor supports any language available on the YouTube video. Common language codes:

If the preferred language is not available, the actor will fall back to the next language in the list or the video's default transcript.

Output Format

The actor outputs a JSON object for each video with the following fields:

Example Output (with timestamps)

{
"videoId":"dQw4w9WgXcQ",
"videoUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
"language":"en",
"isGenerated":true,
"transcriptText":"[0.00s] Hello world\n[2.50s] Welcome to the video",
"snippetCount":2,
"snippets":[
{"text":"Hello world","start":0.0,"duration":2.5},
{"text":"Welcome to the video","start":2.5,"duration":3.0}
],
"success":true
}

Example Output (without timestamps)

{
"videoId":"dQw4w9WgXcQ",
"videoUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
"language":"en",
"isGenerated":false,
"transcriptText":"Hello world Welcome to the video",
"snippetCount":2,
"snippets":null,
"success":true
}

Recommended Memory

512 MB (default)

Scraping Policy

This actor respects YouTube's terms of service and is designed for legitimate use cases:

• ✅ Fetches only publicly available transcripts/captions
• ✅ Does not bypass any authentication or access controls
• ✅ Uses rate limiting and proxy rotation to avoid overloading servers
• ✅ Intended for research, accessibility, content analysis, and archival purposes

Do not use this actor to:

• ❌ Scrape private or unlisted video transcripts without permission
• ❌ Violate YouTube's Terms of Service
• ❌ Redistribute copyrighted content without authorization

Apify Platform Policy

This actor runs on the Apify platform and adheres to:

• Apify Terms of Service
• Apify Acceptable Use Policy
• Apify Privacy Policy

Users are responsible for ensuring their use of this actor complies with all applicable laws and the terms of service of both Apify and YouTube.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

MIT License
Copyright(c)2024
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
ofthis software and associated documentation files(the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THESOFTWAREISPROVIDED"AS IS",WITHOUTWARRANTYOFANYKIND,EXPRESSOR
IMPLIED,INCLUDINGBUTNOTLIMITEDTOTHEWARRANTIESOFMERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESSFORAPARTICULARPURPOSEANDNONINFRINGEMENT.INNOEVENTSHALLTHE
AUTHORSORCOPYRIGHTHOLDERSBELIABLEFORANYCLAIM,DAMAGESOROTHER
LIABILITY,WHETHERINANACTIONOFCONTRACT,TORTOROTHERWISE,ARISINGFROM,
OUTOFORINCONNECTIONWITHTHESOFTWAREORTHEUSEOROTHERDEALINGSINTHE
SOFTWARE.

Support

For issues or feature requests, please open an issue on the actor's GitHub repository or contact the author through Apify Console.