YouTube Transcript API for JavaScript & Node.js

What is a YouTube Transcript API in JavaScript?

A YouTube Transcript API in JavaScript is a plain HTTPS endpoint that takes a video ID or URL and returns the spoken text as structured JSON. You authenticate with a Bearer token in the Authorization header, send a GET request, and parse the JSON body. Because the contract is just HTTP and JSON, the same call works in any JavaScript runtime — Node, Next.js Route Handlers, Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge, Deno, Bun, and even the browser when you proxy through a backend you control.

Quickstart in JavaScript

Native fetch — Node 18+, Workers, Deno, Bun

const res = await fetch(
  "https://youtubetranscriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/transcript?video_url=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  { headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.YT_API_KEY}` } }
);
const { video_id, language, transcript } = await res.json();
console.log(transcript[0].text);

axios variant

Install with npm i axios, then:

import axios from "axios";

const { data } = await axios.get(
  "https://youtubetranscriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/transcript",
  {
    params: { video_url: "dQw4w9WgXcQ" },
    headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.YT_API_KEY}` },
  }
);

The response shape is { video_id, language, transcript[] } where every segment has text, start (seconds), and duration (seconds). Optional metadata adds title, author, and thumbnail. See the full reference at /docs/api/transcript.

TypeScript types

Paste these interfaces into your project to get autocompletion on transcript data. The shape never changes across API versions, so you can ship them in a shared package without worrying about breaking changes.

interface TranscriptSegment {
  text: string;
  start: number;
  duration: number;
}

interface TranscriptResponse {
  video_id: string;
  language: string;
  transcript: TranscriptSegment[];
  metadata?: {
    title: string;
    author_name: string;
    author_url: string;
    thumbnail_url: string;
  };
}

Why our REST API beats DIY scraping