YouTube transcript scrapers on Apify compared (2026): price, run success and features
The official YouTube Data API only downloads captions for videos you own, so most teams use a scraper to get transcripts of other videos. These are the most-used YouTube transcript Actors on Apify Store.
Disclosure: AutomationNation builds one of the Actors below (youtube-transcript-scraper). The other rows use the same public data and the same rules. Corrections are welcome as a GitHub issue.
| Actor | Price (Free plan) | Lowest paid-plan price | Start / run fee | Users (30 days) | Rating | Run success (30 days) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| starvibe/youtube-video-transcript | $5 per 1,000 results | — | — | 2836 | 5.00 (23) | 99.9% | YouTube Video Transcript |
| pintostudio/youtube-transcript-scraper | $0.01 per result | — | — | 2336 | 3.72 (49) | 84.3% | Youtube Transcript Scraper |
| johnvc/YoutubeTranscripts | $0.01 per 1,000 videos processed | $0.01 per 1,000 videos processed | $0 | 2029 | 4.54 (10) | 99.2% | YouTube Transcript & Subtitles Scraper API |
| supreme_coder/youtube-transcript-scraper | $1 per 1,000 transcripts scraped | $0.70 per 1,000 transcripts scraped | $0.0001 | 876 | 5.00 (2) | 97.2% | $0.7 per 1k |
| karamelo/youtube-transcripts | $7 per 1,000 transcripts | $5 per 1,000 transcripts | — | 833 | 4.99 (15) | 100.0% | Youtube Transcripts |
| codepoetry/youtube-transcript-ai-scraper | $1 per 1,000 transcripts extracted (+ 1 more event) | $0.70 per 1,000 transcripts extracted | $0.0025 | 467 | 5.00 (1) | 98.8% | YouTube Transcript Scraper Pro (Captions + AI Fallback) |
| topaz_sharingan/Youtube-Transcript-Scraper-1 | $0.01 per result | — | — | 393 | 5.00 (28) | 99.9% | YouTube Transcript Ninja ⚡️🥷⚡ |
| scrape-creators/best-youtube-transcripts-scraper | $1 per 1,000 results | — | — | 360 | 4.52 (13) | 91.6% | Best Youtube Transcripts Scraper |
| automationnation/youtube-transcript-scraper | $1.50 per 1,000 transcripts | $1.20 per 1,000 | $0.00005 | 1 | — | new | Text + timestamped segments, video details, channels and playlists; residential retry when YouTube challenges a server IP; no-caption videos free. |
Users, ratings and 30-day run success come from Apify Store's public statistics; success is shown for Actors with at least 10 runs. Prices are each Actor's Free-plan list price for its main event, with the lowest paid-plan price where one exists; other events are counted, not priced. Checked 5 October 2026.
How to choose
- Most used: starvibe/youtube-video-transcript (2836 users in 30 days, 99.9% of runs succeeding).
- Most reliable of the top Actors: karamelo/youtube-transcripts (100.0% of runs succeeding in the last 30 days).
- AutomationNation: youtube-transcript-scraper charges $1.50 per 1,000 transcripts, returns timestamped segments with video details, accepts channels and playlists, and doesn't charge for videos without captions.
FAQ
Why do transcript scripts fail on servers?
YouTube asks many data-centre IPs to sign in and its web player now needs a proof-of-origin token for captions; hosted Actors handle this with app endpoints and residential IPs.
Can I get transcripts in another language?
If the video has captions in that language, yes; machine translation from YouTube is rate-limited and best effort.