BulkTranscripts YouTube

Progress of a bulk extraction job: status (running, completed, stopped, failed), total, completed, failed, skipped (no captions), quota (not attempted for lack of credits), remaining, and check_again_in_seconds, the suggested wait before the next check (0 means the job is finished). Free.

List the videos of a YouTube channel (id, title, duration, URL) without fetching transcripts. Accepts @handle, channel URL, or UC… channel id. Costs 1 credit.

Get a channel's newest uploads (up to 15) with publish dates, from YouTube's RSS feed (or a lightweight listing when the feed is unavailable). Always free — no credit charged — so it is ideal for monitoring channels, daily recaps, and 'did they post this week?' checks. Accepts @handle, URL, or UC… id.

List every video in a YouTube playlist, in playlist order (courses and series keep their sequence). Accepts a playlist URL or bare playlist id (13, 18, 26 or 34 characters — all valid). Public and unlisted playlists only: YouTube reports a private playlist as nonexistent (error playlist_private) until its owner sets Visibility to Unlisted. Costs 1 credit.

Fetch the full transcript of one YouTube video as clean text with metadata (title, channel, duration, upload date, language). Accepts a watch URL, youtu.be link, Shorts URL, or bare 11-character video id. Costs 1 credit the first time it is added to this account's library; repeat reads are free. Set include_segments to true only when per-line timestamps are needed (much larger output).

Fetch transcripts for up to 20 videos in one call — pass an array of YouTube URLs or ids. Videos are fetched in parallel and the call returns within about 40 seconds; any video still being fetched at that point is listed in failed with code still_fetching, is not charged, and keeps fetching in the background, so a repeat call with those ids 15-30 seconds later returns them instantly. Each new library addition costs 1 credit; repeats from this account's library are free. Videos without captions are reported per-item and do not fail the batch. One call counts as one request against the rate limit however many videos it holds. If the balance runs out, completed items are returned with partial=true and an out_of_credits stopped block.

One page of per-video outcomes for a bulk job: video id, title, channel, duration, word count and status (ok, cached, or error with a code). Never includes transcript text; every ok or cached video is in the library and free to read again. next_cursor from one page continues to the next. Free.

Search within one channel's uploads to find its videos on a topic — great for researching what a creator has said about something without listing the whole archive. Accepts @handle, channel URL, or UC… id. Costs 1 credit.

Search YouTube by keyword for videos, channels, or playlists (set type). Returns titles, ids, and URLs — useful for research, discovery, and finding videos to transcribe. Costs 1 credit per search.

Extract every transcript of a YouTube channel, playlist or video list in the background. Returns immediately with a run_id; the server discovers the videos (free), fetches each transcript into this account's library (1 credit per new transcript, cache hits and repeats free, failures never charged) and keeps going after this call returns. Transcripts it adds are free to read again from the library. Up to 1,000 videos per job, 2 jobs per account at a time; suited to anything larger than about 20 videos.