datagrit › Data › YouTube Transcript Scraper - Channels & Playlists

YouTube Transcript Scraper - Channels & Playlists

Bulk YouTube transcripts from videos, whole channels and playlists: publish-date window, language priority with fallback, uploaded vs auto captions, video metadata and only-new-since-last-run.

It pulls YouTube transcripts in bulk: paste any mix of single videos, whole channels and playlists, and get one row per video with the full transcript text, timestamped caption lines and the video's metadata (title, channel, exact publish date, duration, views, likes, category). It is built for people who need many transcripts at once: researchers, content and SEO teams, and anyone feeding YouTube content into an LLM, a RAG index or a search tool.

Why use it?

• Whole channels and playlists in one run. Channel links (@handle, /channel/UC..., /c/..., /user/...), playlist links and video links can be mixed in one list. Set how many videos to take per channel or playlist; there is no fixed cap per run.
• Publish-date window. Keep only videos published after and/or before a date, or within a period such as "7 days" or "3 months". Every video is checked against its exact publish date, and channel listing stops once it reaches older videos.
• Language control. Give caption languages in order of preference (en, es, pt-BR...), choose uploaded or auto-generated captions first, or accept only one kind. Turn the language fallback on or off.
• Only new uploads. For scheduled runs, the Actor remembers per channel and per settings which videos it already read and stops the listing at the first of them, so a daily run returns only that day's uploads, never the older backlog.
• Honest rows. A video without a usable transcript gets a free row with the reason (no captions, other languages only, unavailable, blocked, age-restricted, upcoming), so you always know what happened to every video.
• Channel content choice. Long-form videos, Shorts, live stream replays or all uploads.

How it works

For every channel the Actor reads the channel's uploads list page by page (100 videos per page), newest first. For every video it reads the public video details (publish date, metadata) and the caption track list, picks the track that matches your languages and caption type, and downloads that caption file. That is three small requests per video, plus one listing request per 100 videos of a channel or playlist.

Is it legal to scrape YouTube transcripts?

The Actor reads only information that YouTube shows to any visitor without signing in: public video pages, captions and channel lists. It does not log in, does not use cookies of an account, does not solve CAPTCHAs and does not download video files. Transcripts are the work of their creators; how you use them (for example quoting, analysis, or training) is your responsibility under copyright law and YouTube's terms. This description is not legal advice.

Output fields

Every result is one flat record, so it drops straight into a spreadsheet, a database or a CRM.

Sample record

{
  "found": true,
  "reason": null,
  "message": null,
  "videoId": "1qmF_znXxrE",
  "title": "The Right to Life, Liberty — and Free Time | Danielle Roberts | TED",
  "channelName": "TED",
  "channelId": "UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-29T15:00:05.000Z",
  "durationSeconds": 233,
  "viewCount": 59691,
  "likeCount": 568,
  "category": "People & Blogs",
  "description": "Do you feel short on time? Writer and work expert Danielle Roberts would like to help you with that.",
  "language": "en",
  "languageName": "English",
  "captionType": "manual",
  "isLanguageFallback": false,
  "availableLanguages": [
    "ar",
    "en",
    "fr",
    "es"
  ],
  "transcriptText": "So it's exciting and ironic that I'm giving a TED Talk about time in three minutes.",
  "wordCount": 547,
  "segmentCount": 73,
  "segments": [
    {
      "start": 4.292,
      "duration": 2.711,
      "text": "So it's exciting and ironic"
    }
  ],
  "input": "https://www.youtube.com/@TED",
  "sourceType": "channel",
  "sourceTitle": "TED",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qmF_znXxrE",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-01T08:00:00.000Z"
}

Input

Call it from your code

Run the Actor and get the results in one request. Replace YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN with the token from your Apify account settings.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/datagrit~youtube-channel-playlist-transcripts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls":["https://www.youtube.com/@TED","https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUCPc-R61w-s"],"maxItems":20,"maxVideosPerSource":8,"languages":["en"]}'

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('datagrit/youtube-channel-playlist-transcripts').call({
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@TED",
    "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUCPc-R61w-s"
  ],
  "maxItems": 20,
  "maxVideosPerSource": 8,
  "languages": [
    "en"
  ]
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.length, items[0]);

from apify_client import ApifyClient
import os

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("datagrit/youtube-channel-playlist-transcripts").call(run_input={
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@TED",
    "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUCPc-R61w-s"
  ],
  "maxItems": 20,
  "maxVideosPerSource": 8,
  "languages": [
    "en"
  ]
})
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
print(len(items), items[0] if items else None)

Frequently asked questions

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