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YouTube Transcript Scraper

Social MediaMCP

Extract YouTube video transcripts — plain text and timestamped by line — with video metadata, by URL. Choose a preferred subtitle language, with automatic translation fallback when needed.

Standard

Access Level

Run Mode

$1/1000 lines

Cost of Usage

2026/09/17

Last updated

Try it!

📌 What is YouTube Transcript Scraper?

YouTube Transcript Scraper collects a YouTube video's transcript — plain text and timestamped by line — together with the video's title, description, channel info, publish date, and engagement, all by pasting the video's URL. It's built for researchers, content teams, and AI workflows that need YouTube speech turned into structured text without opening each video by hand. Enter up to 100,000 YouTube video URLs, optionally set which subtitle language you prefer, and the template returns each video's transcript and metadata, ready for spreadsheets, dashboards, or downstream AI processing.

💰 Pricing

YouTube Transcript Scraper is priced at $1 per 1,000 results collected (about $0.001 per result).

📦 Output

High-value field groups:

Video content and metadata: title, description, publish date (ISO 8601 and date-only), view count, like count
Creator: channel name, channel URL
Transcript: full transcript text, and a timestamped version broken into individual lines with start time and duration
Language: the subtitle language preference actually applied, and the language of the transcript actually delivered — marked (translated) when it came from YouTube's auto-translation rather than a native caption track
Status: an error field that stays blank on success and explains what went wrong when a row fails

YouTube Transcript Scraper returns these fields:

Data Preview

Video_intro, All_transcript, and All_transcript_Time are shortened below for readability; the full values are returned in the actual export.

{
  "Video_URL": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsxzZ2VJND0",
  "Video_title": "How to Scrape Product Listings Pages",
  "Video_intro": "#WebScraping #Octoparse #DataExtraction #Automation #WebScrapingTutorial #OctoparseTutorial #nocode 🚀 Explore the Ultimate Guide to Our No-Code Webscraping Tool🚀 In this video, I'll walk you through a journey of scraping data from a product listings page with Octoparse step by step...",
  "YouTuber": "Octoparse",
  "YouTuber_URL": "http://www.youtube.com/@Octoparsewebscraping",
  "post_date_iso8601": "2025-08-22T00:13:26-07:00",
  "date": "2025-08-22",
  "View_count": "1,935",
  "Like_count": 17,
  "All_transcript": "Octopass, ein benutzerfreundlicher Web-Scraper für jedermann. Willkommen bei Octop. In unserem vorherigen Video haben wir die Hauptschnittstelle und die wichtigsten Funktionen von Octopse vorgestellt, darunter den Browser, den Workflow-Designer…",
  "All_transcript_Time": "[{\"text\": \"Octopass,\", \"start\": 0.48, \"duration\": 4.56}, {\"text\": \"ein benutzerfreundlicher Web-Scraper für jedermann.\", \"start\": 2.0, \"duration\": 6.24}, {\"text\": \"Willkommen bei Octop. In unserem vorherigen Video haben\", \"start\": 5.04, \"duration\": 5.2}]",
  "inputLanguage": "de",
  "outputLanguage": "de(translated)",
  "error": ""
}

🎯 Use Cases

AI transcript workflows: Collect transcript text for summarization, content clustering, knowledge extraction, or AI-assisted research at scale.
Content operations: Turn spoken video content into structured text for content briefs, blog drafts, subtitle review, and content audits.
Multilingual research: Set Language to prioritize a specific subtitle language across a large batch of videos, with automatic fallback to YouTube's auto-translated captions when a video has no native track in that language.
Timed content analysis: Use All_transcript_Time's per-line start time and duration to find exactly when a topic is mentioned in a video, not just that it appears somewhere in the transcript.

🐙 Why Octoparse

Ready-to-use workflow: YouTube Transcript Scraper is preconfigured to collect transcript text and video metadata together, so you don't need to build or maintain your own scraper.
Flexible, large-scale input: Enter up to 100,000 YouTube video URLs in one task, and optionally set a subtitle language priority list.
Useful results: Get plain transcript text, timestamped transcript lines, video metadata, and transcript language provenance together in one export.
Cloud runs: YouTube Transcript Scraper runs in the cloud, so your computer doesn't need to stay open while it collects.
Export and reuse: Collected data can be exported to standard formats and cloud tasks can be scheduled like other Octoparse cloud templates; scheduling may require a paid Octoparse plan.

📝 Input

YouTube Video URLs (up to 100,000): Enter one YouTube video URL per line, up to 100,000 per task.
Language: Set your preferred subtitle language — one of zh-Hans, zh-Hant, en, de, ja, ko. Comma-separate more than one for priority order (e.g. de,en). If the video has no native track in this language, the scraper automatically requests YouTube's auto-translated version instead — such results are marked (translated) in the output. Leave blank, or enter an unsupported value, and it defaults to en.

🚀 How to Use

Open YouTube Transcript Scraper and click Try it!.
Paste one or more YouTube video URLs in YouTube Video URLs, one per line.
Optionally set Language to your preferred subtitle language or priority list.
Start the task — it runs in the cloud.
Review the collected transcript and video metadata rows.
Export the data in the format you need.

⚠️ Limitations

Up to 100,000 YouTube Video URLs can be submitted per task.
Transcript extraction depends on the video having accessible transcript or caption data at all; private, restricted, removed, or unsupported videos may fail.
Language only accepts zh-Hans, zh-Hant, en, de, ja, or ko; any other value is ignored and the template falls back to en.
If none of your preferred languages have either a native track or an auto-translated option for a given video, the template falls back to that video's first available caption track instead; outputLanguage will show that track's real language code so you can tell it wasn't your requested language.
Results marked (translated) in outputLanguage are YouTube's own machine-translated captions, not native subtitles — translation quality is YouTube's, not something this template controls.
View count and like count are captured at extraction time and may differ from YouTube later.
YouTube Transcript Scraper runs in the cloud only.

💡 Tips

List your preferred languages in priority order in Language (e.g. de,en) so the template only falls back further down your list when a higher preference truly isn't available.
Check outputLanguage before treating a transcript as native — a (translated) suffix means it's YouTube's machine translation, not the video's own captions.
Use the error field to separate successful rows from failed ones in a large batch, rather than assuming every row succeeded.
Use All_transcript_Time when you need to jump to a specific moment in a video, and All_transcript when you just need the full text.

❓ FAQ

What data does YouTube Transcript Scraper collect?

YouTube Transcript Scraper collects the video's transcript (plain text and a timestamped line-by-line version), title, description, channel name and URL, publish date, view count, and like count, plus the subtitle language actually used and an error field for failed rows.

What input does YouTube Transcript Scraper require?

Enter up to 100,000 YouTube video URLs, one per line, and optionally set Language to your preferred subtitle language or priority list.

Can I choose which subtitle language YouTube Transcript Scraper collects?

Yes. Set Language to one or more of zh-Hans, zh-Hant, en, de, ja, ko, in priority order. It defaults to en if left blank or set to an unsupported value.

What happens if a video doesn't have my preferred language natively?

The template automatically requests YouTube's auto-translated version of that language instead, and marks the result (translated) in outputLanguage. If a video has neither a native track nor a translated option for any of your preferred languages, it falls back to that video's first available caption track, and outputLanguage shows the real language you received.

Does All_transcript_Time give timestamps for each line of the transcript?

Yes. Each entry includes the line's text, its start time, and its duration, so you can locate exactly when something is said in the video.

Can I schedule and export data collected by YouTube Transcript Scraper?

Yes. Cloud tasks created from YouTube Transcript Scraper can be exported to standard formats and scheduled like other Octoparse cloud templates; scheduling may require a paid Octoparse plan.

How much does YouTube Transcript Scraper cost?