How to download YouTube transcripts in bulk

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.
• For a single video, the free YouTube transcript generator is quicker, and it can summarize the video 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

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