youtube

Get YouTube video transcript

Returns the transcript of a YouTube video as timestamped segments: each with text, start offset and duration (seconds), language, word count, and speech rate. Supports multiple languages via language. When no transcript exists (the owner disabled captions, the video is members-only, login-gated or gone, or no caption track matches the requested language) the endpoint returns 404 RESOURCE_NOT_FOUND with error.details.reason set to captions_disabled, members_only, login_required, no_captions, or video_gone, and no credits are charged. Retrying returns the same result, with one exception: a video uploaded in the last day can answer captions_disabled until YouTube generates its automatic captions, so a retry a few hours later can succeed.

get/youtube/video/transcript

Request

  • Base URL: https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1
  • URL: https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/youtube/video/transcript
  • Auth: API key in header x-api-key

Query parameters

urlstring required

Full URL of the YouTube video

languagestring

2 letter language code, ie 'en', 'es', 'fr' etc. If no caption track matches the language you specify, the request returns 404 RESOURCE_NOT_FOUND (reason no_captions) at 0 credits.

momentsstring

Optional CSV of moment kinds to find in the timestamped transcript: brand, sponsor_read, product_demo, call_to_action. Returns data.moments = [{ kind, start_ms, end_ms, quote }]. Quote is copied from the transcript. Times come from the segments, never from the judge. Price of the extra step is an owner decision; today it does not add credits.

brandstring

Optional, with moments=. The company or product to look for, so a namesake is not counted.

qstring

Optional question about the video, up to 300 characters, for example q=what discount code do they give. Returns data.moments = [{ kind: "answers_query", start_ms, end_ms, quote }] for each stretch of about six transcript lines that states the answer: a stretch that only shares the topic is left out, and a question the video never answers returns an empty list. The quote is one line copied from the transcript and the times come from the segments. Send moments= or q=, not both. If the step cannot run, the transcript is returned without data.moments and data._warnings carries moments_unavailable. Today it does not add credits.

Headers

Cache-Controlstring

Send no-cache to bypass the response cache and force a live fetch. Billed at the normal endpoint cost; the fresh result is written back to cache for the next caller. Only the no-cache directive triggers this. See the Response Schema guide for details.

Idempotency-Keystring

Optional UUID that makes the request safely retriable. The key is reserved atomically per account before billing. A concurrent retry receives 409 IDEMPOTENCY_IN_PROGRESS with a Retry-After of 1 second while the original is young, growing to a quarter of the time it has been running (at most 30); a crashed reservation expires after 5 minutes. A replay keeps the cached payload immutable except for billing metadata: credits_used becomes 0, idempotent_replay becomes true, and credits_remaining is refreshed to the current balance. A known current balance appears in both the body and X-Credits-Remaining header; no balance row resolves to 0. On a transient lookup failure, body credits_remaining is null and X-Credits-Remaining is omitted. Completed outcomes expire after 24 hours. If the claim store is unavailable, the request fails closed before billing. GET endpoints do not combine idempotent replay with Server-Sent Events: use Accept: application/json when sending this header. The unsupported key-plus-SSE combination is rejected before billing.

Response

Successful response

successboolean required

Whether the request succeeded

platformstring required

Platform name

endpointstring required

API endpoint path

credits_usedinteger required

Number of credits consumed

credits_remaininginteger nullable required

Current account balance, or null when this response could not establish one. Free cache hits always return null because they do not establish an authoritative post-request balance. An idempotency replay also returns null when its current-balance lookup fails. It is never a fabricated zero, so a zero here means the account really is empty. The authoritative reading is the one on a billed response, which comes straight from the deduction.

request_idstring required

Unique request identifier for support

cachedboolean required

Whether the response was served from cache

idempotent_replayboolean

True only when this response is an idempotency replay

Example response

{
  "success": true,
  "platform": "youtube",
  "endpoint": "/v1/youtube/video/transcript",
  "credits_used": 1,
  "credits_remaining": 4999,
  "request_id": "req-abc123",
  "idempotent_replay": true,
  "meta": {
    "hint": {
      "code": "search_multi",
      "message": "You searched \"matcha\" on 3 platforms one call at a time; /v1/search/multi returns each platform's own search rows in one call at the same price per platform, and a platform with no rows is not charged.",
      "method": "GET",
      "path": "/v1/search/multi?query=matcha&platforms=instagram,tiktok,youtube"
    }
  }
}

Changes

No recorded changes to this operation across all 1 revision of this API.