transcriptd

YouTube transcript API for AI agents — pay per successful transcript via x402 (USDC on Base) or on the Apify Store.

The guarantee: you are charged only when a transcript is delivered. No captions, private/deleted video, or a failure on our side → HTTP error → no charge.

Endpoints

Base URL: https://transcriptd.fly.dev

No API key, no account, no subscription — payment IS the authentication (x402, USDC on Base, gasless for the payer).

Related MCP server: YouTube Transcript MCP

Quick start (agent / script)

# pip install "x402[httpx,evm]" eth-account
from eth_account import Account
from x402 import x402Client
from x402.http.clients import x402_httpx_transport
from x402.mechanisms.evm import EthAccountSigner
from x402.mechanisms.evm.exact import ExactEvmScheme
import httpx, asyncio

async def main():
    xc = x402Client()
    xc.register("eip155:*", ExactEvmScheme(signer=EthAccountSigner(
        Account.from_key("0x<key holding USDC on Base>"))))
    async with httpx.AsyncClient(transport=x402_httpx_transport(xc),
                                 base_url="https://transcriptd.fly.dev") as c:
        r = await c.get("/transcript", params={"video": "dQw4w9WgXcQ", "format": "text"})
        print(r.text)

asyncio.run(main())

MCP server

Thin wrapper in mcp/server.py — tools get_transcript and get_video_metadata. Your wallet key stays in YOUR client config; it never leaves your machine.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "transcriptd": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["mcp/server.py"],
      "env": { "X402_PRIVATE_KEY": "0x<key holding USDC on Base>" }
    }
  }
}

Apify actor

Same engine, Apify billing, residential proxy included: apify.com/outspoken_sitkaspruce/transcriptd — input a list of video URLs, get a dataset of transcripts, charged per delivered transcript only.

Notes

• Captions only (manual preferred, auto-generated fallback) — no ASR.

• Extractor auto-updates daily; timedtext rate limits are retried with backoff.

• JSON output: {video_id, language, source, segments: [{start, dur, text}], text}.