Pass a YouTube URL or video ID. Get back the full transcript — plain text plus timestamped segments. No YouTube API key, no Google Cloud project, no quota. Just a VidProxy API key and one HTTP request.
curl "https://vidproxy.pro/api/transcript?url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" \
-H "X-API-Key: your_api_key"{
"available": true,
"text": "We're no strangers to love...",
"segments": [
{ "text": "We're no strangers to love", "start": 18.08, "duration": 2.56 },
{ "text": "You know the rules and so do I", "start": 21.24, "duration": 2.44 }
],
"credits_remaining": 487
}const res = await fetch(
`https://vidproxy.pro/api/transcript?url=${encodeURIComponent(videoUrl)}`,
{ headers: { 'X-API-Key': process.env.VIDPROXY_API_KEY } }
);
const { available, text, segments } = await res.json();
if (available) console.log(text);import requests
r = requests.get(
"https://vidproxy.pro/api/transcript",
params={"url": "https://youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"},
headers={"X-API-Key": "your_api_key"}
)
data = r.json()
if data["available"]:
print(data["text"])
Every transcript response includes three things: an available boolean, a text string with the full plain-text transcript, and a segments array with each caption line, its start time in seconds, and its duration.
text, start (seconds from video start), and duration (seconds).
The X-Credits-Remaining response header tells you how many on-demand lookups you have left in the current billing month. Agency plan users see "unlimited".
You can pass either a full YouTube URL or a bare video ID — both work. All standard YouTube URL formats are supported:
?url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ?url=https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?video_id=dQw4w9WgXcQ
If a video has no captions yet, the API returns "available": false — and you are not charged a credit. If YouTube explicitly disabled captions for that video, the response includes "disabled": true. Failed lookups are always free.
VidProxy doesn't use the YouTube Data API. No Google Cloud project, no OAuth setup, no quota headaches. Sign up and get an API key in under a minute.
The YouTube Data API only lets you download captions for videos you own. VidProxy retrieves transcripts from any public YouTube video — channels you don't own, competitors, news sources, anywhere.
One HTTP request returns the transcript in seconds. No polling, no job queue to manage. The response comes back synchronously.
Every response includes the full segment array with start times and durations — ready to feed into RAG systems, video search indexes, or chapter generation tools.
Beyond on-demand lookups, VidProxy can monitor any YouTube channel and push the transcript to your webhook the moment a new video goes live — no polling required.
The free plan includes 10 on-demand transcript lookups per month. No credit card required to sign up and start fetching transcripts today.
AI and RAG pipelines. Feed YouTube transcripts directly into your vector database for semantic search, Q&A, or summarization. The on-demand endpoint makes it trivial to add new videos to your knowledge base — one call per video, done.
Competitor and market research. Pull transcripts from competitor channels, industry conferences, or analyst briefings. Pipe them into your LLM of choice to extract insights, track topic trends, or surface mentions of your product.
Content repurposing workflows. Generate blog posts, social captions, newsletters, or show notes from video transcripts automatically. VidProxy delivers the raw text your content pipeline needs.
Podcast and video search. Index transcripts from your own or third-party YouTube channels for full-text or semantic search across your video library.
Education and research. Retrieve transcripts from lecture recordings, documentaries, or technical talks for analysis, citation, or study tools.
No. VidProxy does not use the YouTube Data API and requires no Google Cloud credentials. You only need a VidProxy API key, which you get when you create an account.
Yes — any public video with captions available. You don't need to own the channel or have any relationship with the creator. Auto-generated and manual captions are both supported.
The API returns "available": false. You are not charged a credit. If captions are explicitly disabled by the creator, the response also includes "disabled": true so you can distinguish the two cases.
Yes, always. The segments array is included in every response where available is true. No extra parameter needed.
Free: 10 on-demand lookups/month. Starter: 500/month. Pro: 2,500/month. Agency: 10,000/month. Channel monitoring subscriptions don't count against on-demand credits.
API requests are rate-limited at 60 requests/minute on free and Starter, 300/minute on Pro and Agency. On-demand transcript lookups count against your monthly credit quota separately.
Free tier, no credit card, no YouTube API key required.
No credit card · 10 free lookups/month · Cancel anytime