Libraries like youtube-transcript-api work on a laptop but get blocked (“Sign in to confirm you are not a bot”) as soon as they run from a server or in volume. This tool runs the requests through rotating residential IPs and returns the transcript of any public video, Short, channel or playlist.
@handle) and playlists, newest first; “only new videos” for scheduled runs.aiFallback).from apify_client import ApifyClient # pip install apify-client
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("fguiraud/youtube-transcript-scraper").call(run_input={
"videos": [
"https://youtu.be/arj7oStGLkU"
],
"languages": [
"en"
],
"outputs": [
"text",
"segments"
]
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
print(item["title"], item.get("wordCount"))
print(item.get("text", "")[:300])
No Python? Open the Actor page, paste your input in the form and press Start; results export to JSON, CSV or Excel.
Fields from a real run on 2026-09-26 (long values shortened):
{
"videoId": "QT3e6x5CZC8",
"status": "ok",
"title": "What if AI wasn’t a shortcut, but a learning partner? #TEDTalks",
"channel": "TED",
"language": "en",
"isAutoGenerated": true,
"text": "A lot of the narrative, we saw that in the headlines, has been it's going to do the writing for kids, kids are not going to learn to write. But we are showing that there's ways that the AI doesn't write for you, it write...",
"wordCount": 185
}
$0.003 per transcript. Videos without captions, with aiFallback on: $0.010 per audio minute instead.
| Tool | Price |
|---|---|
| This tool | $0.003 per transcript, AI fallback optional |
| starvibe/youtube-video-transcript | $0.005 per video |
| pintostudio/youtube-transcript-scraper | $0.01 per video |
Competitor prices as listed in the Apify Store on 2026-10-03 (Bronze plan where tiers differ); they can change.
Do I need a YouTube API key?
No. Only an Apify account; the free plan includes monthly credit.
What if a video has no captions?
The row says no-captions. Turn on aiFallback to transcribe the audio with Whisper.
Can I get only the videos a channel posted since my last run?
Yes: add the channel to channels, set onlyNewVideos: true and schedule the run.
Can an AI agent use it?
Yes. It is an MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fguiraud/youtube-transcript-scraper (listed in the official MCP registry), and there is an agent skill for Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. Field-name guesses such as url or urls are accepted.