YouTube Transcripts API examples for SocQ

Retrieve available plain-text transcripts for public YouTube video URLs with the actual language, available languages, caption source, channel context, and duration.

Try YouTube Transcripts API · Get an API key · Documentation · All SocQ examples

Use cases

• Video summarization: Use available transcript text to create summaries, research notes, or content briefs for long videos.
• Searchable video archives: Index transcript text with video IDs, titles, channel information, and language metadata.
• Topic and information extraction: Identify topics, entities, claims, and keywords across a selected collection of public videos.
• Translation and localization: Use the selected and available language fields to route transcript text into translation workflows.

API behavior

• The endpoint returns at most one plain-text transcript record per public video URL.
• language is a preferred BCP-47 language, not a guarantee; always use the result's language field as the actual language.
• Videos without an available public transcript do not produce a result, so result count can be lower than input count.
• Transcript text does not include guaranteed segment timestamps or speaker labels.

All requests use the shared asynchronous flow:

submit -> task_id -> poll task -> read every cursor page -> save results

Quick start

cp .env.example .env
export SOCQ_API_KEY="your-api-key"

Run the complete Node.js workflow:

cd node
npm start

Run the complete Python workflow:

python3 -m pip install -r python/requirements.txt
python3 python/main.py

Both examples load payload.example.json, retry transient API responses, wait for task completion, read every cursor page, and save a searchable plain-text transcript collection with actual-language metadata to output/results.json.

Never expose SOCQ_API_KEY in browser code, mobile apps, public repositories, screenshots, fixtures, or logs.

Request

POST https://api.socq.ai/v1/youtube/transcripts
Authorization: Bearer <SOCQ_API_KEY>
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID",
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANOTHER_VIDEO_ID"
  ],
  "language": "en"
}

The submit response contains data.task_id. Poll the task endpoint until data.status becomes succeeded or failed, then continue with data.results.next_cursor while data.results.has_more is true.

Complete workflow example

The Node.js and Python programs implement the production-shaped happy path:

1. Load and validate configuration.
2. Submit the endpoint-specific payload.
3. Retry rate-pressure and transient server responses with bounded backoff.
4. Poll the asynchronous task with a ten-minute application timeout.
5. Stop cleanly on a failed task and surface the public error message.
6. Read all cursor pages instead of silently returning only the first page.
7. Write a stable JSON artifact containing task metadata and normalized records.

Use the synthetic files in fixtures/ for tests and documentation. They do not contain customer, account, or production data.

Production notes

See docs/production-notes.md for validation, retry, timeout, pagination, deduplication, logging, and endpoint-specific guidance.

Responsible use and platform scope

• Use only publicly accessible YouTube channels, videos, Shorts, comments, transcripts, and fields supported by the selected endpoint.
• Do not use the examples to access private videos, restricted content, unavailable transcripts, or authentication controls.
• SocQ is not an official API of the represented social platform and is not affiliated with or endorsed by that platform.
• Before production use, assess the laws, platform terms, privacy obligations, and retention requirements that apply to your organization and use case.
• Collect only the fields needed for a defined purpose, restrict access, set retention periods, and support correction or deletion workflows where required.
• Platform names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.

This section describes the public-data boundary; it is not legal advice or a guarantee that every use case is permitted in every jurisdiction.

Repository contents

Path	Purpose
curl/request.md	Copy-paste submit, poll, and pagination requests
node/index.mjs	Complete Node.js workflow
python/main.py	Complete Python workflow
payload.example.json	Safe endpoint-specific request body
fixtures/	Synthetic submit and task response shapes
docs/production-notes.md	Production integration guidance