I Built a Video Transcription Tool That Works on 25+ Platforms

The Problem

I needed transcripts from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Twitter/X videos. The options were bad: pay $50+/month, download each video manually, or write scrapers that break weekly.

What I Built

ClawGrab takes a video URL from any of 25+ platforms and returns a clean transcript in seconds. Paste a URL, get text.

How It Works

YouTube is the hardest. Google blocks datacenter IPs and bot TLS fingerprints. The fallback chain:

1. curl_cffi with JA3/JA4 browser TLS fingerprint impersonation
2. InnerTube client rotation (WEB_EMBEDDED, TVHTML5, WEB, MWEB, ANDROID)
3. 16 Invidious instance fallback
4. Audio download + Groq Whisper-large-v3 STT

Everything else (TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, Twitch, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Rumble, etc.) uses yt-dlp for audio extraction, FFmpeg for conversion, and Groq Whisper for transcription.

AI Processing

Once you have the transcript, ClawGrab generates summaries, key quotes, blog drafts, social posts, and translations via DeepSeek.

Stack

Flask, yt-dlp, FFmpeg, Groq Whisper-large-v3, DeepSeek, Supabase auth, Stripe ($12/mo Pro), Render ($7/mo). Total infra: under $10/month.

Try It

Free tier: 10 grabs/month, no account needed.

getclawgrab.com

The MCP server lets you integrate directly into Claude Code or any MCP-compatible AI tool. Happy to answer questions about the YouTube bypass or Whisper pipeline.