How to Scrape YouTube Transcripts in Bulk (No API Key)

You can pull the transcript of any captioned YouTube video — or a whole channel or playlist — without an API key or quota. Here is the fastest way.

Steps

Collect the URLs. Gather the video, channel or playlist URLs you want transcripts for. You can paste hundreds at once.
Choose language and format. Set your preferred caption languages (in priority order) and pick an output format: JSON, plain text or SRT.
Run the tool. Run the YouTube Transcript Scraper on Apify. Videos without captions return a clear status and are not charged.
Export the results. Download the transcripts as JSON, text or SRT, or pull them from the dataset via API for your pipeline.

Frequently asked questions

No — no key, no OAuth, no quota.

Yes — paste a channel or playlist URL and set a max number of videos.

Try it now

Run it on Apify — no install, results in minutes.