Compare, Instagram transcripts

Instagram reel transcript tools compared

Two transcript Actors launched this summer, steadyfetch (Aug 21) and afanasenko (Jul 29), and each passed 200 monthly users within weeks (Apify Store stats, 2026-10-15). Here is what six tools charge for the same reel, from their Free-plan prices on 2026-10-15, and what you get for the money.

• Prices as of 2026-10-15
• Six tools
• Free-plan prices
• Sources linked

Cost per reel

apple_yang is slightly lower than us for reels under a minute, and we're slightly lower at three minutes. At this level the difference is a fraction of a cent per reel, so what's included matters more than the price. Most tools here, ours included, get cheaper on paid Apify plans; steadyfetch, for example, drops to $0.0075 per reel on Scale (its listing schedules $0.0125 on Scale from 2026-10-16). Our transcript minute stays $0.004 on every plan, while the row drops from $0.0019 to $0.0015 on Scale and $0.0011 on Business.

Want different numbers? The reels transcript page has a calculator for any reel count and length.

What each tool includes

How to choose

• You need timestamps, hooks or on-screen text: steadyfetch or afanasenko are built for that.
• You need translation: sian.agency sells it as an add-on.
• You need transcripts plus the whole post record from profiles, hashtags, places or sounds in one run: that's what we built. Pair it with the creator signals for outreach research.
• You already use apify/instagram-reel-scraper and need a few transcripts: the add-on is convenient, but at $0.048 per started minute on Free it's the most expensive per minute here.

How we calculated

• Free-plan tier prices, read from the public Apify API on 2026-10-15.
• Started minutes: a 30-second reel is 1 minute, 90 seconds is 2, three minutes is 3.
• Per-reel figures exclude once-per-run start fees (sian.agency $0.005 per GB of memory, apify $0.001). The calculator adds them once per run.
• The "3 min video" column matters for longer videos. afanasenko supports up to 3 minutes; ours goes to 15.

We make one of these tools. If a number here is wrong or out of date, open an issue on the Issues tab and we'll fix it.

Run it from code

The last 50 reels from a creator with transcripts: about $0.30 for 30-second reels.

// Save as run.mjs, then: npm i apify-client && APIFY_TOKEN=... node run.mjs
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

const run = await client.actor('yugenox/instagram-scraper').call({
  startUrls: [
    "https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/reels/"
  ],
  maxItems: 50,
  includeTranscript: true
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const item of items) console.log(item.url, item.transcriptLanguage, item.transcript);

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient  # pip install apify-client

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])

run = client.actor("yugenox/instagram-scraper").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/reels/"],
    "maxItems": 50,
    "includeTranscript": True,
})
if run is None:
    raise RuntimeError("Run did not finish")

for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item.get("url"), item.get("transcriptLanguage"), item.get("transcript"))

# Small jobs: runs the Actor and returns the rows in one call (up to 5 minutes).
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/yugenox~instagram-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"startUrls":["https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/reels/"],"maxItems":50,"includeTranscript":true}'

Last updated 2026-10-06.