[Home](/) / [How To](/how-to/) / Video transcripts

How to

# How to download YouTube transcripts in bulk

Copying transcripts one video at a time does not scale, and transcript libraries get IP-blocked on servers.

**Short answer**

Give the **Video Transcript Scraper** a channel or a list of video URLs. It returns one row per video with the full transcript and timestamps. It runs through rotating proxies, so you do not hit YouTube's IP blocks.

## A real use case

A team builds a support chatbot from a software company's 200 tutorial videos. They enter the channel, pull 200 transcripts with segments, and load them into their vector database the same afternoon.

## Step by step

1. **Add a channel** under Profiles or channels, or paste video URLs.
2. **Set latest videos per profile**.
3. **Keep segments on** if you need timestamps for citations.
4. **Run** and export JSON for your pipeline.

### Input (paste into the JSON tab)

```
{
  "profiles": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@yourchannel"
  ],
  "maxVideosPerProfile": 200,
  "speechToText": "fallback",
  "includeSegments": true
}
```

### What you get back

```
{
  "platform": "youtube",
  "title": "How to set up SSO in 5 minutes",
  "transcript": "In this video we'll connect your identity provider...",
  "transcriptSource": "subtitles",
  "wordCount": 912,
  "segments": [
    {
      "start": 0.0,
      "end": 4.2,
      "text": "In this video we'll connect"
    }
  ]
}
```

Trimmed example. Names and numbers are illustrative; your run returns real data with more fields.

## Tips

- Segments let your chatbot link to the exact second in the video.
- Already blocked by YouTube? Read [why transcript APIs get blocked](/blog/youtube-transcript-api-ip-blocked/).
- For a single video, the free [YouTube transcript generator](https://anyvideototext.com/youtube-transcript) is quicker, and it can [summarize the video](https://anyvideototext.com/youtube-video-summarizer) too.

## What it costs

$2 per 1,000 transcripts. 200 videos cost about **$0.40**.

Plus a small per-run start fee. Apify's free plan includes monthly credit, enough to test. Check the listing for current pricing.

## FAQ

**Do I need a YouTube API key?**

No. The official API does not return transcript text anyway.

**What about videos without captions?**

With speechToText on fallback, those go through speech-to-text.

## Related

- [**Video Transcript Scraper**](/video-transcript-api/) Transcripts for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X videos. $2 / 1,000 transcripts.
- [How to get the transcript of a TikTok video](/how-to/get-tiktok-video-transcript/)
- [How to transcribe Instagram Reels to text](/how-to/transcribe-instagram-reels/)
- [How to transcribe a Twitter (X) video](/how-to/transcribe-twitter-x-video/)
- [How to get a recipe from a TikTok video](/how-to/get-recipe-from-tiktok-video/)
- [How to get TikTok transcripts with an API](/how-to/get-tiktok-transcripts-with-an-api/)
- [All How To guides](/how-to/)

## Try it on your own data

Paste the input above, run it, and see your results in a couple of minutes.
[Open Video Transcript Scraper](https://apify.com/scrape-lads/video-transcript-scraper?utm_source=scrapelads&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=how-to-download-youtube-transcripts-in-bulk&utm_content=video-transcript-scraper)