apify-youtube-transcript-scraper

# YouTube Transcript Scraper — agent skill and hosted MCP

Bring YouTube captions into research, notes and video summaries with the [YouTube Transcript Scraper](https://apify.com/harshmaur/youtube-transcript-scraper) Apify Actor. Supply videos, channels or playlists and receive transcript text, timestamped segments, SRT or VTT, alongside video and channel metadata. Translation is optional.

A YouTube account is unnecessary. An Apify account pays for successful transcripts; videos without available captions do not incur a transcript charge.

## Add the hosted tool

```
https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=harshmaur/youtube-transcript-scraper
```

Authenticate with an Apify sign-in in your MCP client or a Bearer token from [Apify Integrations](https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

For Claude Code:

```
claude mcp add --transport http youtube-transcripts https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=harshmaur/youtube-transcript-scraper
```

## Add the skill

```
/plugin install apify-youtube-transcript-scraper --marketplace harshmaur/apify-youtube-transcript-scraper
```

The same skill works with other agents that support skill packages:

```
npx skills add https://github.com/harshmaur/apify-youtube-transcript-scraper
```

Read the [skill guide](skills/apify-youtube-transcript-scraper/SKILL.md) for input choices, transcript formats, language options, cost estimates and reporting missing captions.

## Useful requests

- Summarize a video and link each quotation to its timestamp.
- Export captions from a playlist as SRT subtitles.
- Collect recent channel transcripts for notes or a searchable text collection.
- Translate available captions for a multilingual research project.

This Actor returns captions and metadata. It does not download audio or video, search YouTube by keyword, or create speech-to-text for a video without captions. Auto-generated captions can contain transcription mistakes.

## Transcript pricing

On Apify's Free plan, 1,000 successful transcripts cost $5. Paid-plan rates are $4.00 to $4.67 per 1,000. The default `maxVideos` is 50 per channel or playlist; explicitly supplied video links are all included.

The hosted tool is published as [`io.github.harshmaur/youtube-transcript-scraper` in the official MCP Registry](https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers?search=io.github.harshmaur/youtube-transcript-scraper).

For product questions, use the [Actor Issues page](https://apify.com/harshmaur/youtube-transcript-scraper/issues).

The repo author builds this paid Actor. There are no affiliate links. The skill text and configuration are MIT licensed.