ERROR HANDLING

YouTube Transcript API Errors

Plan for TubeScript API error codes including invalid URLs, rate limits, unavailable videos, access denied, no-caption AI fallback limits, and temporary transcription errors.

QUICK ANSWERS

Direct answer

The real endpoint is https://tubescript.cc/v1/transcript. API access is included with the Team plan.

01

YouTube Transcript API Errors

TubeScript API errors are structured. Common codes include INVALID_URL, RATE_LIMITED, VIDEO_TOO_LONG, VIDEO_UNAVAILABLE, VIDEO_ACCESS_DENIED, AI_FALLBACK_CAPACITY_EXHAUSTED, TRANSCRIPTION_TEMPORARY_ERROR, and SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE.

Error response
{
  "success": false,
  "error": {
    "code": "AI_FALLBACK_CAPACITY_EXHAUSTED",
    "message": "AI fallback capacity is temporarily exhausted. Try again later, or retry a captioned video."
  }
}

Separate permanent and temporary failures

Retry TRANSCRIPTION_TEMPORARY_ERROR, SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE, and AI_FALLBACK_CAPACITY_EXHAUSTED with backoff. Do not blindly retry private, unavailable, or too-long no-caption videos.

Long captioned videos are different

VIDEO_TOO_LONG applies to the no-caption AI fallback path. If YouTube captions are available, long videos can still be processed from captions.

Access denied means the source is blocked

VIDEO_ACCESS_DENIED means the video is private, restricted, deleted, or YouTube/Gemini refused access. Treat it as a user-facing source problem unless a later retry succeeds.

Build on the transcript engine

Team includes API keys, JSON transcript access, cache-backed reads, and 100 API requests per day.

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