YouTube Transcript Scraper

Turn a YouTube link, a channel or a playlist into text with one run of harshmaur/youtube-transcript-scraper. Each video gives one row with the transcript and the video facts. The agent picks the input list, sets how many videos to read per channel, and chooses the transcript shape.

Disclosure: the Actor is paid per result and is built by the skill author. Links carry no affiliate parameters.

When to Use

Use to summarize public YouTube videos, find timestamped quotations, export captions, or research transcripts from channels and playlists.

Example prompts

Prompts this skill handles:

• "Summarize https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw in five bullet points."
• "Give me SRT subtitles for these three videos."
• "Pull the transcripts of the last 20 videos from @mkbhd and list every product he reviewed."
• "Transcripts of this playlist, in Spanish, with timestamps so I can link to the exact second."

Out of scope (the boundary):

• "Download the MP4" or "get the audio" — this Actor returns text and metadata only.
• "Find videos about X" — it does not search YouTube. Get the video, channel or playlist links first.
• "Read the comments" — use a YouTube comments Actor.

Prerequisites

• Apify account (sign up). The free plan's monthly credit pays for about 1,000 transcripts.
• Authentication via one of:
  • apify login (OAuth, if you use the Apify CLI)
  • APIFY_TOKEN environment variable
  • Token from Apify Console → Settings → Integrations
• A previously installed and reviewed Apify CLI, or the Apify MCP server (see "Calling the Actor").

Workflow

Step 1 — Pick the input list

The user gives you	Field	Notes
Video links: watch?v=, youtu.be/, /shorts/, /live/	videoUrls	One row per link. maxVideos does not apply.
A channel: @handle, youtube.com/@handle, /channel/UC…, /c/Name	channelUrls	The newest uploads, up to maxVideos per channel.
A playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=…	playlistUrls	Playlist order, up to maxVideos; about 100 at most.

Mix the three lists in one run when the user names videos and channels together.

Step 2 — Set the options

Field	Values	Default
maxVideos	Videos per channel or playlist	50
dateFrom, dateTo	YYYY-MM-DD, publish date window	none
language	ISO 639-1 code (en, es, hi, ja)	the video's own caption language
transcriptFormat	both, segments, text, srt, vtt	both

Pick the format from the task:

• Summary, Q&A, RAG chunks → text (smallest rows).
• Quotes with a link to the exact second → segments or both.
• A subtitle file for an editor or player → srt or vtt.

Example input:

{
  "channelUrls": ["@mkbhd"],
  "maxVideos": 20,
  "dateFrom": "2026-09-01",
  "transcriptFormat": "text"
}

Fetch the live schema when a field is in doubt:

apify actors info "harshmaur/youtube-transcript-scraper" --input --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-youtube-transcript-scraper 2>/dev/null

Step 3 — Estimate the cost, then run

You pay only for transcripts in the dataset. Videos with no captions, private videos and videos outside the date window cost nothing.

Apify plan	Per 1,000 transcripts
Free	$5.00
Starter	$4.67
Scale	$4.33
Business and higher	$4.00

cost ≈ videos × $0.005. For channels, videos = channels × maxVideos. Under about 200 videos ($1), run it. Above that, state the estimate and get a yes first.

apify actors call "harshmaur/youtube-transcript-scraper" \
  -i '{"videoUrls":["https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw"],"transcriptFormat":"text"}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-youtube-transcript-scraper \
  2>/dev/null

The output gives status and the dataset ID at storage.defaultDatasetId. A measured run of 4 transcripts (2 links and 2 channel videos) finished in under a minute. A run of several hundred videos can take many minutes. Start long runs without waiting and poll with apify runs info "RUN_ID" --json --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-youtube-transcript-scraper 2>/dev/null.

Step 4 — Fetch and report

EXPORT_DIR="$(mktemp -d)" || exit 1
apify datasets get-items "DATASET_ID" --format json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-youtube-transcript-scraper \
  2>/dev/null > "$EXPORT_DIR/yt-transcripts.json"

Each row has dataType: transcript or failed.

Need	Fields
Video	videoId, url, title, description, durationSeconds, publishedAt, category, keywords, thumbnail
Numbers	viewCount, likeCount, commentCount
Channel	channelName, channelId, channelUrl, channelUsername, subscriberCount
Transcript	transcriptText (plain text), transcript (segments with start, end, duration, text