Infer a video's sponsors

Try in Playground

Experimental. Reads the watch page and, when available, the transcript, reports YouTube's paid-promotion disclosure and infers suspected sponsors from sponsorship phrases, promotional description links, promo codes and transcript mentions. Every suspected sponsor carries its evidence and a confidence; this is inference, not a YouTube field.

GET/v1/youtube/video/sponsorsx-api-key

Headers

Get your API key

x-api-keystringrequiredheader

Your ScrapeAtlas customer key. Create one on /account/ and set SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY.

Query parameters

urlstringrequiredquery

YouTube video or Short URL (youtube.com/watch?v=…, youtu.be/…, /shorts/…, /embed/…, /live/…; www, m and music subdomains) or a bare 11-character video ID.

max 2048 chars

Examplehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vid0000001a

languagestringquery

Language code used to select the transcript track (default en).

Response fields

requestIdstring

Operation identifier for correlation.

Upstream HTTP attempts, decoded bytes and duration.

accounting.upstreamRequestsinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.responseBytesinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.durationMsnumber

Always included.

≥ 0

successboolean

True when usable data was returned; inspect status and coverage.

statusenum

success, partial (coverage.warnings names the omission), failed or challenged.

one of: success, partial

id, url, title, channel {id, url, handle, title, thumbnail} and isPaidPromotion (YouTube's disclosure).

video.idstring

Always included.

video.urlstring

Always included.

absolute HTTPS URL

video.titlestring

Always included.

video.channel.idstringnullable

Always included.

video.channel.urlstringnullable

Always included.

video.channel.handlestringnullable

Always included.

video.channel.titlestringnullable

Always included.

video.channel.thumbnailstringnullable

Always included.

video.isPaidPromotionboolean

Always included.

Inferred sponsors: name (the brand named in a sponsorship phrase, else the link's domain label), website (domain or null), confidence (high: sponsorship phrase plus link or several signals; medium: one promotional signal; low: transcript mention only) and evidence [{source: paid_promotion_badge | description | description_link | promo_code | transcript, text}]. Creator-owned hosts (YouTube, social networks, link aggregators, stores) are never sponsors.

up to 20 items

suspectedSponsors.namestring

Always included.

suspectedSponsors.websitestringnullable

Always included.

suspectedSponsors.confidenceenum

Always included.

one of: high, medium, low

Always included.

up to 20 items

suspectedSponsors.evidence.sourceenum

Always included.

one of: paid_promotion_badge, description, description_link, promo_code, transcript

suspectedSponsors.evidence.textstring

Always included.

status found or not_found, methods applied (paid promotion badge, description, description links, transcript when read), transcriptChecked, transcriptAvailable and a fixed note.

sponsorDetection.statusenum

Always included.

one of: found, not_found

sponsorDetection.methodsstring[]

Always included.

up to 10 items

sponsorDetection.transcriptCheckedboolean

Always included.

sponsorDetection.transcriptAvailableboolean

Always included.

sponsorDetection.notestring

Always included.

sourceUrlstring

Public YouTube URL the operation represents (page or API route).

absolute HTTPS URL

fetchedAtstring

UTC retrieval timestamp.

source is public_page. Warning transcript_unavailable when the transcript could not be read (inference then uses the description only).

coverage.sourceenum

Always included.

one of: public_page, public_api

coverage.completeboolean

Always included.

coverage.warningsenum[]

Always included.

up to 8 items

HTTP 200 returns the success variant. Check status: partial means usable data with warnings, and failed or challenged requests carry a failure object described in Errors & responses.

Error codes

HTTP	failure.code	Meaning
400	`invalid_request`	Missing, malformed, duplicate or conflicting parameters, unsupported parameters or an unsafe URL.
400	`invalid_continuation`	YouTube rejected the supplied continuation token.
401	`unauthorized`	Missing or invalid worker API key.
403	`restricted_page`	The channel, video, playlist or post is terminated, private, members-only or otherwise unavailable.
403	`age_restricted`	The video is age restricted and cannot be read logged out.
404	`not_found`	YouTube reports no channel, video, playlist or post for the identifier.
429	`upstream_rate_limited`	YouTube rate limited the request; no automatic retry.
502	`upstream_challenged`	YouTube rejected or challenged the request.
502	`unsupported_page`	The response lacks the embedded data, the data is malformed, or the resolved identity does not match the request.
502	`response_too_large` `payload_too_complex`	The response exceeded byte, depth or node limits.
502	`unsafe_redirect` `request_limit` `upstream_error`	The bounded request could not complete.
503	`busy`	All worker slots are in use.
504	`timeout`	The total retrieval deadline expired.

Code example

curl "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/sponsors?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/sponsors?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"
    }
  }
);

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.status, data);

type Result = {
  status: "success" | "partial" | "failed" | "challenged";
  requestId: string;
  [field: string]: unknown;
};

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/sponsors?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": process.env.SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY!
    }
  }
);

const data = (await response.json()) as Result;
if (data.status === "failed" || data.status === "challenged") {
  throw new Error(`YouTube request failed: ${data.requestId}`);
}
console.log(data);

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/sponsors",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    params={
        "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vid0000001a"
    },
    timeout=60,
)
data = response.json()
print(data["status"], data)

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
)

func main() {
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/sponsors?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a", nil)
	req.Header.Set("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
	resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	var data map[string]interface{}
	json.NewDecoder(resp.Body).Decode(&data)
	fmt.Println(data["status"], data)
}

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        var client = HttpClient.newHttpClient();
        var request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .uri(URI.create("https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/sponsors?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a"))
            .GET()
            .header("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
            .build();
        var response = client.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
        System.out.println(response.body());
    }
}

Use your sa_live_… customer key at https://api.scrapeatlas.com.

Responses

Successful result. Synthetic example validated against the runtime contract.

{
  "success": true,
  "status": "success",
  "requestId": "00000000-0000-4000-8000-000000000018",
  "video": {
    "id": "Vid0000001a",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vid0000001a",
    "title": "Synthetic video one",
    "channel": {
      "id": "UCsynthetic0000000000001",
      "url": "https://www.youtube.com/@ExampleChannel",
      "handle": "ExampleChannel",
      "title": "Example Channel",
      "thumbnail": "https://yt3.example.test/avatar=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj"
    },
    "isPaidPromotion": true
  },
  "suspectedSponsors": [
    {
      "name": "Examplebrand",
      "website": "examplebrand.test",
      "confidence": "high",
      "evidence": [
        {
          "source": "paid_promotion_badge",
          "text": "Includes paid promotion"
        },
        {
          "source": "description_link",
          "text": "Sponsored by ExampleBrand: https://examplebrand.test/offer"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sponsorDetection": {
    "status": "found",
    "methods": [
      "paid promotion badge",
      "description",
      "description links",
      "transcript"
    ],
    "transcriptChecked": true,
    "transcriptAvailable": true,
    "note": "Sponsors are inferred from public description, links, promo-code text, and transcript evidence."
  },
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vid0000001a",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-12T12:00:00.000Z",
  "coverage": {
    "source": "public_page",
    "complete": true,
    "warnings": []
  },
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 3,
    "responseBytes": 400000,
    "durationMs": 1500
  }
}

Missing, malformed, duplicate or conflicting parameters, unsupported parameters or an unsafe URL. YouTube rejected the supplied continuation token.

{
  "requestId": "9d2f1c0a-6b1e-4c7d-9a8e-2f3b4c5d6e7f",
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 0,
    "responseBytes": 0,
    "durationMs": 0
  },
  "success": false,
  "status": "failed",
  "failure": {
    "code": "invalid_request",
    "message": "Invalid request: missing, duplicate, unsupported or malformed parameters."
  }
}