How to get TikTok transcripts with an API

A real use case

A content tool lets users paste a TikTok link and get a blog draft. The backend sends the link to this API, gets the transcript in a few seconds, and passes it to an LLM.

Step by step

1. Get an Apify API token (free account).
2. POST the input JSON to the run-sync endpoint above.
3. Read the response: one object per video.
4. Check status before using transcript.

Input (paste into the JSON tab)

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675"
  ],
  "speechToText": "fallback",
  "includeSegments": false
}

Call it from code

import requests

TOKEN = "your-apify-token"
url = ("https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/scrape-lads~tiktok-transcript-scraper"
       "/run-sync-get-dataset-items")
body = {"urls": ["https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675"]}

rows = requests.post(url, params={"token": TOKEN}, json=body, timeout=300).json()
for r in rows:
    print(r["status"], r.get("transcript", "")[:200])

What you get back

{
  "status": "ok",
  "platform": "tiktok",
  "transcript": "Three habits that made my pottery sell out...",
  "transcriptSource": "subtitles",
  "language": "en",
  "wordCount": 214
}

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

Tips

• Run-sync waits up to 5 minutes. For big batches, start an async run and fetch the dataset when it finishes.
• The same call works for Instagram, YouTube and X with the Video Transcript API.

What it costs

$0.90 per 1,000 transcripts from captions; speech-to-text costs more (see the listing).

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

FAQ

Related

• TikTok Transcript Scraper Transcripts for any TikTok video or a creator's latest videos. $0.90 / 1,000 from captions.
• How to get the transcript of a TikTok video
• How to transcribe Instagram Reels to text
• How to download YouTube transcripts in bulk
• How to transcribe a Twitter (X) video
• How to get a recipe from a TikTok video
• All How To guides