How to Get YouTube Transcripts in Zapier

What you need

A free TranscriptYT API key (100 free credits, one transcript is one credit) and a Zapier plan that includes Webhooks by Zapier, which is a premium app on Zapier's paid plans. (Code by Zapier is too limited on the free plan: its steps stop after 1 second.)

Transcribe every new video from a channel

Use YouTube's New Video in Channel trigger, or RSS by Zapier on the channel's feed (the channel ID finder gives you the RSS URL). Then add a Webhooks by Zapier action with the GET event.

• URL: https://transcript-yt.com/v1/transcript
• Query string params: url = the video URL from the trigger; optional format = text, language, or translate_to
• Headers: Authorization = Bearer ts_live_...
• Leave Unflatten on, so fields like title and text map cleanly

Use the transcript in the next steps

The step returns title, author, language, and text, plus timestamped segments. Map text into a Google Sheets row, a Notion page, or a Slack message, or into a ChatGPT or Claude step with a prompt like "Write a LinkedIn post from this transcript".

For a ready-made summary, call GET https://transcript-yt.com/v1/summary with the same url parameter instead. It returns a summary, key points, and timestamped notes in one step.

Errors and long videos

Zapier steps have a short time limit. Captioned videos return in a few seconds, but a long video without captions is transcribed from audio and can take a minute or more, so for those use the API's batch endpoint from a scheduled Zap or a tool like n8n or Make that allows longer timeouts. Failed requests are never billed.