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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 have no transcript fee. A reel that's only a song comes back as no_speech or lyrics (with the song text). If optional on-screen text is enabled and text is found, that separate event can still be billed; any Actor Start charge is separate too.
  • 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. On the Free plan, a delivered reel transcript costs $0.006 including its first 3 minutes of audio; longer audio costs $0.003 per extra started minute. Private, deleted and failed reels have no transcript-result fee. Optional on-screen-text events and any Actor Start charge are separate, so no transcript fee does not necessarily mean a zero-cost run. See the current Pricing tab before running a batch.

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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