youtube-apify-transcript – OpenClaw Skill

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name: youtube-apify-transcript version: 1.0.7 description: Fetch YouTube transcripts via APIFY API. Works from cloud IPs (Hetzner, AWS, etc.) by bypassing YouTube's bot detection. Free tier includes $5/month credits (~714 videos). No credit card required. tags: [youtube, transcript, apify, video, subtitles, captions, cloud-ip, free-tier, web-scraping]

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

• 🔗 APIFY Pricing
• 🔑 Get API Key
• 🎬 YouTube Transcripts Actor

Setup

1. Create free APIFY account: https://apify.com/
2. Get your API token: https://console.apify.com/account/integrations
3. Set environment variable:

# 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

# 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

# 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):

Hello and welcome to this video.
Today we're going to talk about...

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

metadata:
  clawdbot:
    emoji: "📹"
    requires:
      env: ["APIFY_API_TOKEN"]
      bins: ["python3"]

📹 YouTube Transcript Fetcher (APIFY)

Fetch YouTube video transcripts from anywhere — even cloud servers where YouTube blocks direct access.

✨ Features

• Works from cloud IPs (AWS, GCP, VPS, etc.)
• Bypasses YouTube bot detection via APIFY proxies
• Text or JSON output with timestamps
• Language preference support
• Simple Python script, no SDK needed

💰 Free Tier

APIFY offers $5/month free credits — that's approximately 714 videos per month at $0.007 each!

No credit card required. Sign up here

🚀 Quick Start

# 1. Set your API token
export APIFY_API_TOKEN="apify_api_YOUR_TOKEN"

# 2. Fetch a transcript
python3 scripts/fetch_transcript.py "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

📖 Documentation

See SKILL.md for full documentation, setup instructions, and usage examples.

🔗 Links

• APIFY Free Tier - $5/month free
• Get API Key
• YouTube Transcripts Actor

⚙️ Requirements

• Python 3.6+
• requests library (pip install requests)
• APIFY API token (free)

📄 License

MIT