youtube-apify-transcript
Fetch YouTube transcripts via APIFY API (works from cloud IPs, bypasses YouTube bot detection).
Why APIFY?
YouTube blocks transcript requests from cloud IPs (AWS, GCP, etc.). APIFY runs the request through residential proxies, bypassing bot detection reliably.
Free Tier
- •$5/month free credits (~714 videos)
- •No credit card required
- •Perfect for personal use
Cost
- •$0.007 per video (less than 1 cent!)
- •Track usage at: https://console.apify.com/billing
Links
Setup
- •Create free APIFY account: https://apify.com/
- •Get your API token: https://console.apify.com/account/integrations
- •Set environment variable:
bash
# Add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc export APIFY_API_TOKEN="apify_api_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE" # Or use .env file (never commit this!) echo 'APIFY_API_TOKEN=apify_api_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE' >> .env
Usage
Basic Usage
bash
# Get transcript as text python3 scripts/fetch_transcript.py "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" # Short URL also works python3 scripts/fetch_transcript.py "https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID"
Options
bash
# Output to file python3 scripts/fetch_transcript.py "URL" --output transcript.txt # JSON format (includes timestamps) python3 scripts/fetch_transcript.py "URL" --json # Both: JSON to file python3 scripts/fetch_transcript.py "URL" --json --output transcript.json # Specify language preference python3 scripts/fetch_transcript.py "URL" --lang de
Output Formats
Text (default):
code
Hello and welcome to this video. Today we're going to talk about...
JSON (--json):
json
{
"video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
"title": "Video Title",
"transcript": [
{"start": 0.0, "duration": 2.5, "text": "Hello and welcome"},
{"start": 2.5, "duration": 3.0, "text": "to this video"}
],
"full_text": "Hello and welcome to this video..."
}
Error Handling
The script handles common errors:
- •Invalid YouTube URL
- •Video has no transcript
- •API quota exceeded
- •Network errors
Metadata
yaml
metadata:
clawdbot:
emoji: "📹"
requires:
env: ["APIFY_API_TOKEN"]
bins: ["python3"]