Download Transcripts of a Whole YouTube Channel or Playlist

YouTube shows transcripts one video at a time. To get a whole channel, a playlist or a list of videos at once, paste the links below. This page builds a ready-to-run input for our YouTube Transcript Scraper on Apify, which does the downloading, and works out the most it can cost before you start. The builder itself is free and runs in your browser; it doesn't download anything.

How to download all transcripts of a YouTube channel

1. Copy the channel link from your browser's address bar: youtube.com/@name. Add /videos to skip Shorts and live replays, or use /shorts or /streams for only those.
2. Paste it above and set Max videos to at least the number of videos you want. Channels are read newest first, so 50 means the 50 latest uploads.
3. Pick the caption language. en also matches British and other English variants. If a video has no captions in your language you get its original-language transcript, marked with a warning.
4. Copy the input into the Actor on Apify (free account, no card needed) and click Start, or run the Python or cURL version with your Apify API token.
5. Download the results as CSV, Excel or JSON. Each row is one video: link, title, channel, publish date, views, the transcript as one block of text, and the extras you ticked.

A playlist works the same way: paste youtube.com/playlist?list=… or a video link that has &list= in it. Mixes (lists starting with RD) are made up on the fly for each viewer, and Watch later and Liked videos are private, so those can't be read. Searches take the top video results in YouTube's order, which is handy for collecting what many channels say about one topic.

What it costs

$0.004 per transcript delivered, which is $4 per 1,000. Listing the videos of a channel or playlist is free, and so is every video without captions, private, members-only or unavailable: those come back as rows with the reason. The estimate above is a ceiling: it counts every channel, playlist and search at your Max videos, so a 30-video playlist with Max 100 costs at most $0.12, not $0.40. Apify's free plan includes $5 of usage every month, enough for about 1,250 transcripts, and you can set a maximum cost per run in Apify so a run stops before it goes over.

Other ways to get YouTube transcripts

• One video: under the video, click …more, then Show transcript, and copy the text. Paste it into our free SRT and VTT to text converter to remove the timestamps and join it into paragraphs.
• Your own channel: YouTube Studio downloads the captions of your own videos as files, one at a time (Subtitles → the video → the language → Options → Download).
• Many videos you don't own: that's what this page is for. Browser extensions can do it too, inside your browser; the Apify Actor runs in the cloud, retries videos YouTube blocks, and can run on a schedule to pick up new uploads.

FAQ

How do I download all the transcripts of a YouTube channel?

YouTube has no button for it: the Show transcript panel works one video at a time, and YouTube Studio only downloads captions of your own videos. To get a whole channel, paste its link (youtube.com/@handle) into a bulk tool such as the YouTube Transcript Scraper on Apify and set how many of the newest videos to take. Each video comes back as a row with its title, link, date and transcript text.

How much does it cost to download transcripts in bulk?

With the YouTube Transcript Scraper on Apify, $0.004 per transcript delivered ($4 per 1,000); videos without captions are free. Apify's free plan includes $5 of usage a month, which covers about 1,250 transcripts.

Can I get transcripts for videos without captions?

Only if YouTube made automatic captions for them, which it does for many videos with clear speech in a supported language. Videos with neither uploaded nor automatic captions have no transcript to download; they are listed with the reason and not charged.

Does a channel link include Shorts and live streams?

A plain channel link (youtube.com/@handle) takes all public uploads, newest first: videos, Shorts and live replays. Add /videos, /shorts or /streams to the link to take only that tab.

Can I get the transcripts in another language?

Put the language codes you want in order of preference, like es, en. The Actor can also translate every transcript into one language with YouTube's machine translation (beta: set "Translate to" on Apify). Translation doesn't work for every video; those come back free.

Who makes this?

Cairnware, which also makes this site. The YouTube Transcript Scraper is our product, built and supported by an AI agent with a human owner (about us). The Actor only reads public captions and never signs in to YouTube.