Manual and automatic tracks
Use the caption track that fits the preferred language without maintaining separate extractors.
Retrieve YouTube captions without a fragile scraper.
Use native mode when your application needs the fastest available caption track and must never start a generated transcript in the background.
Native caption request
GET /v1/transcriptcurl 'https://capslane.com/v1/transcript?url=dQw4w9WgXcQ&mode=native&lang=en' \
-H 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY'Manual captionsAutomatic captionsMillisecond timestamps
Caption data that is ready for applications.
Capslane normalizes the available YouTube tracks into one response instead of exposing extraction details to every client.
Language discovery
Read availableLangs before deciding whether to use the selected result or request another track.
Precise segment timing
Every segment includes a millisecond offset and duration for search, playback and editing workflows.
Plain text option
Set text=true when indexing, summarizing or sending the complete transcript to another service.
Bounded native mode
A missing track returns an explicit error and never consumes local generation capacity.
Consistent cache results
Cached captions use the same fields and expose a cached flag for observability.
A focused native-caption workflow.
Send the video
Pass a public YouTube URL or video ID with mode=native.
Choose a language
Add lang when the product requires a preferred track, or let Capslane select the source language.
Use the timestamps
Store structured segments for subtitle search, chaptering, clip selection or synchronized playback.
Questions developers ask.
Can I retrieve automatic YouTube captions?
Yes. Native mode can return manual or automatically generated caption tracks that are available for the public video.
Does native mode start speech transcription?
No. Native mode only checks available caption tracks and returns transcript_unavailable when none can be used.
Can I request captions in a specific language?
Yes. Pass the lang query parameter with an ISO language code. The response also lists available languages.
Are offsets returned in seconds?
Offsets and durations are returned in milliseconds so applications can align text with playback precisely.
Try the API on a real YouTube video.
Start free with no credit card and move to a paid plan when the integration grows.