The transcript of any YouTube video, for a fifth of a cent.

Pass a video URL or id and get the full transcript as clean text and timed segments, in the caption language you ask for, along with the title, channel, length, views, publish date, description, keywords and chapters. Ready to drop into a model's context.

What you get back

• Full transcript text plus timed segments (start, duration, text)
• Manual captions preferred over auto-generated, any available language
• Video details: title, channel, channel id, duration, views, publish date, description, keywords
• Chapters parsed from the description
• The list of caption languages the video has

Call it over HTTP

No account and no API key. The first response is 402 Payment Required with the price; an x402-capable client pays in USDC on Base and retries. You're only charged when the call succeeds.

curl -i -X POST https://api.exepal.com/v1/youtube/transcript \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"video":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ","lang":"en"}'
# → 402 Payment Required (price, network: base, pay-to address)
# An x402 client pays in USDC and retries → 200 with the JSON answer

Use it from Claude, Cursor or any MCP client

Add https://api.exepal.com/mcp as a remote MCP server. The tool is youtube_transcript, at the same price.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "exepal": { "type": "http", "url": "https://api.exepal.com/mcp" }
  }
}

Questions

What if the video has no captions?

You get a 400 saying so and you are not charged. Other transcript APIs bill a credit for a miss.

Does it transcribe audio?

No. It reads the caption tracks YouTube already has, including auto-generated ones, which covers most videos.

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