YouTube Transcript Scraper

What this actor does

Convert public videos, channels, searches, captions, and comments into structured transcript records.

YouTube Transcript Scraper exports captions, timestamped segments, video metadata, comments, and optional AI chapters without a YouTube API key.

Use cases

• Video knowledge base ingestion
• Creator and channel research
• Transcript search and citation workflows

Output fields

The actor is designed for compact JSON records that are easy to send into dashboards, webhooks, MCP clients, vector databases, and AI pipelines.

Best first run

Submit 3-5 public video URLs first and confirm transcript segments, timestamps, title, channel, and published date before using channel or search ingestion.

Use through Apify MCP

MCP clients can call this actor as a focused Apify tool. Open the URL below in a compatible client, connect with Apify OAuth or your client's supported token configuration, then use the prompt as a small first run.

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=harvestlab/youtube-scraper

Suggested MCP prompt:

Use harvestlab/youtube-scraper through Apify MCP. Start with a small first run: Submit 3-5 public video URLs first and confirm transcript segments, timestamps, title, channel, and published date before using channel or search ingestion. Return compact JSON with these fields when available: video_id, title, channel, transcript, segments, published_at. Include source URLs or source identifiers in the response.

Sample JSON output

Field values vary by source and input, but the record shape is kept compact so it can move cleanly into dashboards, webhooks, and AI workflows.

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Example result title",
  "channel": "Example Channel",
  "transcript": "A concise transcript excerpt with source context.",
  "segments": "timestamped transcript segments",
  "published_at": "2026-09-01T08:00:00Z"
}

Related search intents

FAQ