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LMSlay
LMSlay

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Instagram Reels to text in bulk (no login): transcripts, hooks and on-screen text

#instagram #ai #api #marketing

Disclosure: I build the Apify Actor used in this post (TubeText Labs).

Instagram doesn't give you transcripts for Reels, and copying captions misses what people actually say. If you research hooks, repurpose content, or feed creators' videos into an LLM, you want the spoken words as text – for many reels at once. Here's a way to do it without logging in.

A creator's latest reels → text 

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/tubetext~instagram-reels-transcript/run-sync-get-dataset-items?timeout=300" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": ["@natgeo"], "maxReelsPerProfile": 10}'
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You can mix @usernames, profile links and single reel links in the same list.

Each row has the transcript (plain, timestamped, or SRT), the opening hook line, the caption, plays, likes and posting time. The speech is transcribed with Whisper, so it handles 90+ languages.

Things that save you money

  • Music-only reels and songs are free. A reel that's only a song comes back as no_speech or lyrics (with the song text) and isn't charged.
  • Only new reels. Turn on Only new reels and schedule the run daily: each run transcribes just what the creator posted since last time.
  • Optional on-screen text. Many reels put the message in captions on screen, not in the audio. includeOnScreenText reads those overlays with a vision model (+$0.002 per reel, only when text is found) – useful for recipe and listicle reels with no speech at all.

Speed and cost

About 15 reels per minute with default settings, $0.006 per reel (the first 3 minutes of audio are included; almost every reel is shorter). Private, deleted and failed reels are free.

Ideas

  • Build a swipe file of the opening hooks of the 50 latest reels in your niche.
  • Turn a coach's reels into a searchable knowledge base for an AI assistant.
  • Track competitors daily with Only new reels and send new transcripts to Slack.

Actor: https://apify.com/tubetext/instagram-reels-transcript

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