Check captions before building an integration
Paste a public YouTube watch URL, Shorts URL or 11-character video ID. Optionally enter a preferred language such as en or fr. No API key is needed for this preview. The inspector checks cached native captions or requests an available caption track; it never starts audio generation.
A successful result shows the selected language, discovered caption languages, segment count and the first three segments. Each preview segment is limited to 180 characters. Covered duration is the end of the last timed caption, which may differ from the full video duration. Displayed preview times are rounded down to whole seconds; the API preserves milliseconds.
Interpret an unavailable result
Missing captions, an unavailable video and a temporary upstream failure are different conditions. Read the returned message before deciding to generate or retry. Private, removed, restricted and unsupported videos may remain unavailable even with an account. A preferred language is not a request to translate the video.
To retrieve the complete transcript, create a free workspace and API key. The YouTube transcript API returns full text or timestamped segments and supports generated fallback when native captions are absent. Free accounts include 50 transcript requests and 15 generated minutes per month.
Continue with the Python example, Node.js example or n8n workflow. For playback and quote search, read the timestamp guide; for a missing track, read how generated jobs work.