Get a video transcript

Try in Playground

Read the public caption track of a video or Short: the timed transcript (text, startMs, endMs, startTimeText), the plain text, the track's language name and every available caption track. The track is the last one whose language code matches the requested language (English by default), which prefers the auto-generated track when both exist. Without a matching track the transcript fields are null and the response is partial.

GET/v1/youtube/video/transcriptx-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. Response: Watch URL of the video.

max 2048 chars

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

languagestringquery

Display name of the track without the "(auto-generated)" suffix ("English"); null without a track.

Exampleen

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

typestring

Always video.

urlstring

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. Response: Watch URL of the video.

absolute HTTPS URL

transcriptobject[]nullable

Timed segments in order: text (whitespace-normalised), startMs and endMs as decimal strings, startTimeText ("0:18", "1:02:03"); null when no matching track exists.

transcript_only_textstringnullable

Every segment joined with single spaces; null without a track.

languagestringnullable

Display name of the track without the "(auto-generated)" suffix ("English"); null without a track.

videoIdstring

Video ID.

Every caption track the Android player lists (baseUrl, name, vssId, languageCode, kind, isTranslatable, trackName); returned as data.

up to 100 items

captionTracks.baseUrlstring

Always included.

absolute HTTPS URL

Always included.

captionTracks.name.simpleTextstring

Always included.

captionTracks.vssIdstring

Always included.

captionTracks.languageCodestring

Always included.

captionTracks.kindstringoptional

Optional.

captionTracks.isTranslatablebooleanoptional

Optional.

captionTracks.trackNamestringoptional

Optional.

sourceUrlstring

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

absolute HTTPS URL

fetchedAtstring

UTC retrieval timestamp.

source is public_api (the public player API plus one timed-text read). Warning transcript_unavailable when no track matches; nothing is transcribed or synthesised.

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/transcript?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a&language=en" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/transcript?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a&language=en",
  {
    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/transcript?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a&language=en",
  {
    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/transcript",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    params={
        "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vid0000001a",
        "language": "en"
    },
    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/transcript?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a&language=en", 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/transcript?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a&language=en"))
            .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": "00000000-0000-4000-8000-000000000017",
  "type": "video",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vid0000001a",
  "transcript": [
    {
      "text": "[Music]",
      "startMs": "320",
      "endMs": "14580",
      "startTimeText": "0:00"
    },
    {
      "text": "We're no strangers to",
      "startMs": "18800",
      "endMs": "25960",
      "startTimeText": "0:18"
    },
    {
      "text": "synthetic caption text",
      "startMs": "21800",
      "endMs": "29119",
      "startTimeText": "0:21"
    }
  ],
  "transcript_only_text": "[Music] We're no strangers to synthetic caption text",
  "language": "English",
  "videoId": "Vid0000001a",
  "captionTracks": [
    {
      "baseUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/api/timedtext?v=Vid0000001a&lang=en&signature=synthetic",
      "name": {
        "simpleText": "English"
      },
      "vssId": ".en",
      "languageCode": "en",
      "isTranslatable": true,
      "trackName": ""
    },
    {
      "baseUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/api/timedtext?v=Vid0000001a&kind=asr&lang=en&signature=synthetic",
      "name": {
        "simpleText": "English (auto-generated)"
      },
      "vssId": "a.en",
      "languageCode": "en",
      "kind": "asr",
      "isTranslatable": true,
      "trackName": ""
    }
  ],
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vid0000001a",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-12T12:00:00.000Z",
  "coverage": {
    "source": "public_api",
    "complete": true,
    "warnings": []
  },
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 2,
    "responseBytes": 60000,
    "durationMs": 700
  }
}

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."
  }
}