Video transcript

Video Transcript

Extract transcripts from videos via TranscriptAPI.com.

Setup

If $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY is not set, read references/auth-setup.md and follow the instructions there to get and store the key.

Required Headers

Every request needs two headers:

• Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
• User-Agent: your agent's name and version if known (e.g. HermesAgent/0.11.0, ClaudeCode/1.0). Version is optional — agent name alone is fine. Do not omit this header or send a bare default — Cloudflare will return a 403 (error code 1010) and block the request.

GET /api/v2/youtube/transcript

curl -s "https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/transcript\
?video_url=VIDEO_URL&format=text&include_timestamp=true&send_metadata=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY" \
  -H "User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0"

Param	Required	Default	Values
video_url	yes	—	YouTube URL or 11-char video ID
format	no	json	json (structured), text (readable)
include_timestamp	no	true	true, false
send_metadata	no	false	true, false

Accepted URL formats:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID
• https://youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID
• Bare video ID: dQw4w9WgXcQ

Response (format=text&send_metadata=true):

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": "[00:00:18] We're no strangers to love\n[00:00:21] You know the rules...",
  "metadata": {
    "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
    "author_name": "Rick Astley",
    "author_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstley",
    "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg"
  }
}

Response (format=json):

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": [
    { "text": "We're no strangers to love", "start": 18.0, "duration": 3.5 },
    { "text": "You know the rules and so do I", "start": 21.5, "duration": 2.8 }
  ]
}

Tips

• Summarize long transcripts into key points first, offer full text on request.
• Use format=json when you need precise timestamps for quoting specific moments.
• Use send_metadata=true to get video title and channel for context.
• Works with YouTube Shorts too.

Errors

Code	Meaning	Action
401	Bad API key	Check key or re-setup
402	No credits	Top up at transcriptapi.com/billing
403/1010	Cloudflare block	Add or fix User-Agent header
404	No transcript	Video may not have captions enabled
408	Timeout	Retry once after 2s

1 credit per successful request. Errors don't consume credits. Free tier: 100 credits, 300 req/min.