Do I need a YouTube developer account?

No. There is no YouTube app, OAuth flow or app review. One InsightSocial API key works for this endpoint and every other platform, and your first 10 calls priced at 100 credits or less are free.

What does one call return?

One call returns the transcript in the data object of the standard response envelope. Fields the platform did not provide are listed in unavailable, so a null there means unknown, not zero.

What happens if the account is private or nothing is found?

You get an error or an empty result, and it costs 0 credits. The API reads public YouTube data only, so private accounts and deleted content come back as not found rather than as partial data.

Can I call the YouTube Video Transcript API from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor?

Yes. Add the hosted MCP server at https://api.insightsocial.app/mcp to your AI app and sign in. The assistant finds this endpoint by name, shows its price and calls it with your credits.

GET /v1/youtube/video/transcript

YouTube Video Transcript API

Q: How much does the YouTube Video Transcript API cost?

30 credits per successful call. A call that errors or finds nothing costs 0 credits, and an answer from the shared cache costs 2. Pro's 10,000 monthly credits cover about 333 calls at 30 credits each. Add dry_run=1 to see the price of a call without making it.

Returns the spoken transcript of a video as timestamped segments, each with text, start time and duration, plus language, word count, and speech rate.

Get a free API key Full API reference

30 credits a call · single call · failed calls free · 10 free calls to start

curl "https://api.insightsocial.app/v1/youtube/video/transcript?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdQw4w9WgXcQ" \
-H "x-api-key: $INSIGHTSOCIAL_API_KEY"

200 OKJSON

{
"success": true,
"platform": "youtube",
"endpoint": "/v1/youtube/video/transcript",
"schema_version": "2",
"data": {
"transcript": {
"language": "<string | null>",
"text": "<string | null>",
"segments": "<array | null>"
}
},
"unavailable": [],
"credits_used": "<integer>"
}

When to use it

Use it for a single video URL; when the video has no captions the reply is a 404 naming the reason, which is expected rather than a failure.

Parameters

Query parameters for GET /v1/youtube/video/transcript. Send your key in the x-api-key header.

Name	Required	Description
url	Yes	Full URL of the YouTube video
language	No	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).

Response fields

The same unified schema every platform returns, so code written for YouTube works on the other eight. A field the platform did not provide is null and listed in unavailable.

Field	Type	Notes
language	string \| null	The content's language as the platform states it, e.g. en, pt-BR. Detected languages come later (§7.1).
text	string \| null
segments	array \| null

Every field, error and example is in the YouTube Video Transcript API reference.

How much does the YouTube Video Transcript API cost?

30 credits per successful call.

Failed calls are free
A call that errors or finds nothing costs 0 credits.
Know the price first
Add dry_run=1 and the response quotes the call without making it. Nothing is charged.
One balance
API calls and Chrome extension exports share the same credits, on the free plan too.

See plans and credit packs How credits work