Apify Youtube Transcript API

YouTube Transcript API: Captions to Structured JSON

Fetch the transcript of any YouTube video as clean JSON with a hosted YouTube transcript API. Pass a single URL or a batch array; each video comes back as one row with the full plain text, timestamped snippets, language details, and the video's title, channel, and view count.

When to use this skill

• The user wants a YouTube transcript API, or asks to get, fetch, or download the transcript of a YouTube video.
• They want subtitles or captions as JSON, SRT, VTT, or plain text.
• They ask to extract the transcript from a YouTube video, a Short, or a list of URLs.
• Their own transcript library keeps failing with IpBlocked or RequestBlocked from a cloud or datacenter IP.

Not for: videos with no caption track at all (those return an error row, not a transcript), private or age-gated videos, or generating captions with speech-to-text (this API reads YouTube's published caption tracks; it does not run ASR).

What you get (one row per video)

non_timestamped (full transcript text), timestamped (snippets with text, start, duration), language, language_code, source_type (Manual or Auto-generated), is_translatable, translation_languages, total_seconds, duration_human, snippet_count, video_id, url, success. With metadata on (the default): title, channel_name, channel_url, view_count, like_count, upload_date, thumbnail_url, tags, categories. Optional extra formats: srt, vtt, text. A video that cannot be transcribed comes back as an error row (success false with error_type and error_message) instead of failing the run.

Prerequisites

• Apify account (sign up at https://apify.com?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=awesomeskills).
• Authentication via apify login, or an APIFY_TOKEN environment variable (Apify Console, Settings, Integrations).

The Actor

• Store page: https://apify.com/johnvc/YoutubeTranscripts?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=awesomeskills
• Actor ID: johnvc/YoutubeTranscripts
• Pricing: pay per video transcribed; failed videos are free (see references/gotchas.md).

Run it with the Apify CLI

Single video:

apify actors call "johnvc/YoutubeTranscripts" -i '{"youtube_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"}' \
  --json \
  --output-dataset \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-youtube-transcript-api \
  2>/dev/null

Batch, with SRT and VTT added to each row:

apify actors call "johnvc/YoutubeTranscripts" -i '{"youtube_url":["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw","https://www.youtube.com/shorts/s4UkCaf_scs"],"output_formats":["srt","vtt"]}' \
  --json \
  --output-dataset \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-youtube-transcript-api \
  2>/dev/null

Every call carries the three flags this repo expects: --json, --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-youtube-transcript-api, and 2>/dev/null. The --output-dataset flag prints the dataset rows (the transcript data) on success instead of just run metadata.

Run it from Claude or another AI agent (MCP)

The Actor is MCP-ready. Add the hosted server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,johnvc/YoutubeTranscripts

Then ask, for example: "Get the transcript of this YouTube video and summarize it." MCP setup docs: https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp

Workflow

1. Collect the URL or URLs. Standard watch URLs, Shorts, youtu.be, embed, and mobile URLs all work; batches go in one array.
2. Pick the language if it matters. languages is an ordered preference list (default ["en"]); first available track wins, with fallback to whatever exists.
3. Optional: discover before fetching. "list_only": true returns available_transcripts per video (language, manual vs generated, translatable) without fetching or charging for any transcript.
4. Optional: request output_formats (srt, vtt, text) if the user needs subtitle files rather than JSON.
5. Run the Actor and read the dataset. Deliver non_timestamped for reading or LLM input, timestamped for alignment, srt or vtt for players.

Inputs

• youtube_url (string or array, required)
• languages (ordered array of ISO 639-1 codes, default ["en"])
• translate_to (single ISO code; see limits below)
• transcript_type (any, manual, generated; default any)
• output_formats (array: srt, vtt, text)
• preserve_formatting (boolean, keeps inline italic and bold tags)
• list_only (boolean, discovery mode, free of the per-video charge)
• include_metadata (boolean, default true; set false for slightly faster runs)

Cost

Billing is per video successfully transcribed, at a fraction of a cent per video; a thousand-video batch costs on the order of a few cents. Failed videos and list_only discovery runs are not charged the per-video fee. Details and the live-price check are in references/gotchas.md.

Honest limits

• Translation (translate_to) only covers the languages YouTube exposes for auto-translation, roughly 18 codes. An unsupported code returns the original track unchanged; check for the translated_to field in the output to confirm translation actually happened.
• No captions means no transcript: the API reads YouTube's caption tracks, so a video with captions disabled returns an error row.
• Very large batches take time; the Actor processes several videos in parallel, but thousands of URLs can run for many minutes.

Troubleshooting

• Error row with error_type IpBlocked or RequestBlocked: rare and transient; the Actor retries with fresh sessions automatically. Rerun the failed URLs; only successes are charged.
• Empty translated_to after requesting translation: the target code is not in translation_languages for that video. Pick a supported code from a list_only run.
• Timed-out run on a huge batch: split the input into smaller arrays, or raise the run timeout in the run options.

See references/gotchas.md for cost guardrails and error recovery, and references/actor-index.md for the Actor routing table.

Related Actors

• Google Short Videos API (find Shorts by keyword, then feed the URLs into this transcript API): https://apify.com/johnvc/google-short-videos-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=awesomeskills