How to use a video transcript API in Python

A real use case

A research team collects videos about a product recall from four platforms. One script transcribes all 300 links and writes them to a CSV for coding.

Step by step

1. Install apify-client.
2. Call the actor with your URLs.
3. Iterate the dataset for results.

Input (paste into the JSON tab)

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675"
  ],
  "speechToText": "fallback"
}

Call it from code

# pip install apify-client
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("your-apify-token")
run = client.actor("scrape-lads/video-transcript-scraper").call(run_input={
    "urls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
        "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675",
    ],
    "speechToText": "fallback",
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["platform"], item["status"], item.get("wordCount"))

What you get back

[
  {
    "platform": "youtube",
    "status": "ok",
    "transcriptSource": "subtitles",
    "wordCount": 47
  },
  {
    "platform": "tiktok",
    "status": "ok",
    "transcriptSource": "speech-to-text",
    "wordCount": 132
  }
]

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

Tips

• Rows that failed (private, deleted, no speech) come back with a status and errorCode and are not charged.
• Getting blocked with youtube-transcript-api? See why it happens.

What it costs

$2 per 1,000 transcripts across all platforms.

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

• Video Transcript Scraper Transcripts for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X videos. $2 / 1,000 transcripts.
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• 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
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