{"slug": "how-to-get-a-transcript-of-any-spotify-podcast-episode-3-ways-with-and-without", "title": "How to get a transcript of any Spotify podcast episode (3 ways, with and without code)", "summary": "A developer built Spotify Podcast Transcript, an Apify actor that takes a Spotify or Apple Podcasts link, RSS feed, or direct audio URL, locates the show's public RSS feed, matches the episode, and transcribes the audio with Whisper large-v3. The tool returns plain text, timestamped segments, and optional SRT files, and the developer reports a 50-minute episode took about 40 seconds and cost $0.15 at $0.003 per audio minute. The writeup also documents two manual alternatives: copying the in-app transcript where available, or pulling the audio enclosure from the public RSS feed and running OpenAI's open-source Whisper locally.", "body_md": "I wanted the text of a few podcast episodes so I could search them and feed them to an LLM. Spotify shows a transcript in its app for some shows, but there is no export button, and many shows have no transcript at all.\n\nHere are the three ways I found to get one, with the trade-offs of each.\n\nOpen the episode, scroll down, and if the show has transcripts enabled you will see a **Transcript** section.\n\nAlmost every podcast on Spotify is also published through a public RSS feed, and the feed links to the actual audio file. So you can download the audio and transcribe it on your own machine.\n\n**Find the feed.** Apple runs a free lookup API:\n\n```\ncurl \"https://itunes.apple.com/search?media=podcast&term=lex+fridman+podcast\"\n```\n\nThe `feedUrl` field in the response is the RSS feed. Open it, find the episode you want, and copy the URL in its `<enclosure>` tag. That is the audio file.\n\n**Transcribe it** with OpenAI's open-source Whisper:\n\n```\npip install -U openai-whisper\ncurl -L -o episode.mp3 \"PASTE_THE_ENCLOSURE_URL\"\nwhisper episode.mp3 --model small --output_format txt\n```\n\nShows that are exclusive to Spotify have no public feed, so this route does not work for them.\n\nI got tired of step 2, so I built a small tool that does the same thing automatically: [Spotify Podcast Transcript](https://apify.com/spokentext/spotify-podcast-transcript) on Apify.\n\nYou paste the link you get from Spotify's **Share → Copy link**, and it finds the show's public feed, matches the episode, and transcribes the audio with Whisper large-v3. It also accepts Apple Podcasts links, RSS feeds and direct audio URLs.\n\nFrom Python:\n\n``` python\nfrom apify_client import ApifyClient\n\nclient = ApifyClient(\"YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN\")\n\nrun = client.actor(\"spokentext/spotify-podcast-transcript\").call(run_input={\n    \"urls\": [\"https://open.spotify.com/episode/4IpeKxxTTa6vw4lRbqH0lg\"],\n})\n\nfor item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():\n    print(item[\"episodeTitle\"])\n    print(item[\"text\"][:500])\n```\n\nEach result has the plain text, timestamped segments, and optionally an SRT subtitle file. Paste a show link instead of an episode link and it takes the most recent episodes.\n\nSome numbers from my own runs: a 50-minute episode took about 40 seconds and cost $0.15 (it is priced at $0.003 per audio minute). Apify's free plan includes $5 of credit a month, which covers roughly 27 hours of audio.\n\n| You want to... | Use | \n|---|---|\n| Read along once | The Spotify app | \n| Transcribe an episode now and then, for free | RSS feed + Whisper | \n| Transcribe many episodes or automate it | The tool, through its API | \n\nOne reminder: a transcript is a copy of someone else's work. Using it for your own notes, search or analysis is one thing; republishing it needs the publisher's permission.\n\n*Disclosure: I built the tool described in section 3. This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked by me.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-to-get-a-transcript-of-any-spotify-podcast-episode-3-ways-with-and-without", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/clem616/how-to-get-a-transcript-of-any-spotify-podcast-episode-3-ways-with-and-without-code-d0m", "published_at": "2026-10-05 16:35:14+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-05 16:48:20.617341+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "natural-language-processing"], "entities": ["Spotify", "Apify", "OpenAI", "Whisper", "Apple Podcasts", "Apple"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-to-get-a-transcript-of-any-spotify-podcast-episode-3-ways-with-and-without", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-to-get-a-transcript-of-any-spotify-podcast-episode-3-ways-with-and-without.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-to-get-a-transcript-of-any-spotify-podcast-episode-3-ways-with-and-without.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-to-get-a-transcript-of-any-spotify-podcast-episode-3-ways-with-and-without.jsonld"}}