These are not alternatives to each other. They cover different libraries. TranscriptAPI serves YouTube: video transcripts, channel browsing, playlist extraction, YouTube search. Spoken serves podcasts, returning the transcript published with an episode as Markdown with real speaker names. Neither can do the other's job, so the question is which library your content is in.
Which one do you actually need?
| TranscriptAPI | Spoken | |
|---|---|---|
| Library covered | YouTube | Podcasts |
| Podcast episodes | Not covered | The entire product |
| YouTube videos | The entire product | Not covered |
| Speaker names | No speaker identification | Real names, resolved per turn |
| Output format | JSON segments | Markdown, speakers bold, timestamps per turn |
| Billing model | Monthly subscription | One-time credit packs |
| Credits if you stop paying | Paused until you renew | Yours; they never expire |
| Re-fetching an item | Costs a credit each time | Free, always |
Podcasts that are also on YouTube
Plenty of large podcasts also post full episodes to YouTube, which makes it reasonable to assume a YouTube transcript API covers podcasts by proxy. In practice it covers whichever episodes a show chose to upload, under YouTube's captions rather than the transcript published with the episode, and without any speaker attribution.
For a show that publishes to both, that is a real difference in the artifact you get back: auto-captions are a single undifferentiated stream, where a published podcast transcript carries turn boundaries, which Spoken resolves to names. For a show that does not post to YouTube, there is no overlap at all.
Pick the right tool
Pick TranscriptAPI for
- YouTube videos, channels and playlists
- Searching YouTube programmatically
- Watching a channel for new uploads
- Video-first research and summarisation
Pick Spoken for
- Podcast episodes as clean Markdown
- Archiving a show's back catalogue
- Anything where "who said it" matters
- RAG and search over podcasts
- Credits that never expire
FAQ
Does TranscriptAPI support podcasts?
No. TranscriptAPI is a YouTube API: transcripts, search, channels and playlists, all scoped to YouTube. For podcast episodes you need a podcast transcript API.
Can I just pull a podcast from YouTube instead?
YouTube only works for shows that upload full episodes there, and what you get is YouTube's captions rather than the transcript published with the episode, a single stream with no speaker attribution. Spoken returns the published transcript with speakers resolved to real names.
Does TranscriptAPI name speakers?
TranscriptAPI has no speaker-identification feature. Spoken resolves speakers to real names as part of the response.
Do Spoken credits expire?
Spoken credits never expire. Spoken sells one-time packs rather than a subscription, so credits you have bought stay yours, and re-fetching an episode you already pulled costs nothing.
Can I use both?
Yes, Spoken and TranscriptAPI combine, and if you index both podcasts and YouTube that is the normal setup. They cover different content, so there is nothing to reconcile between them.
TL;DR: TranscriptAPI covers YouTube and Spoken covers podcasts. If you need both libraries, run both.
Thousands of transcripts fetched by developers building summarizers, RAG pipelines, and podcast tools