How to Get TikTok Video Transcripts (Even When There Are No Captions)

Description and use

An automation recipe for extracting TikTok video transcripts, even when captions are missing, using an Apify actor that falls back to Whisper AI.

Problem

TikTok auto‑captions are not exportable and there is no official transcript API, so users cannot easily obtain transcripts for videos that lack captions.

Outcome

The actor processes 24 random TikToks: 10 with auto‑captions, 14 without. For the 3 spoken videos without captions, Whisper AI generates transcripts. The output includes video metadata, transcript source, and hook text.

Workflow

• Run the Apify actor via the console or API
• Paste TikTok video URLs or IDs
• Select transcript source (auto, captions, ai)
• Start the actor and export results as CSV/JSON/Excel

Evidence

TikTok shows auto-captions on many videos, but there's no button to export them and no official transcript API.

Source

I ran 24 random public TikToks (from #dance, #photomode and #asmr) through the actor on 26 Oct 2026: 10 had TikTok's own auto-generated caption track, 14 had no caption track.

Source

Option 1: No code (Apify Console) – Open the actor page and click Try for free…

Source