vid2context vs youtube-transcript-api
youtube-transcript-api is a mature Python library (MIT) that fetches the captions of a YouTube video, including auto-generated and translated tracks. vid2context does that too, then keeps going when there are no captions, and packages the result for agents.
What each one does
| youtube-transcript-api | vid2context | |
|---|---|---|
| Language | Python library and CLI | TypeScript: CLI, MCP server, HTTP API, library |
| YouTube creator and auto captions | Yes | Yes |
| YouTube translated captions | Yes | Yes |
| Video has no captions | Fails with an error | Speech-to-text fallback, free-first |
| Other sites and local files | No, YouTube only | Vimeo and others natively, the rest through yt-dlp, local files |
| Metadata and chapters | No | Title, channel, description, duration, chapters, tags |
| Output formats | JSON, text, SRT, WebVTT formatters | text, json, markdown, srt, vtt, pack, and a .zip with all of them |
| Agents | Call it from your own code | MCP server with tools for transcripts, outlines, playlists and search |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
When to pick youtube-transcript-api
- You write Python and only need YouTube captions inside your own program.
- You want one small dependency with proxy and cookie options you control.
When to pick vid2context
- Some of your videos have no captions, or are not on YouTube.
- You want the transcript in an agent (Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT) without writing glue code.
- You need metadata and chapters with the transcript, or long videos read section by section.
Same video, both tools
For "Me at the zoo", vid2context returns the header and timed transcript below (rendered from a recorded run). youtube-transcript-api returns the same caption lines as a list of { text, start, duration } objects, without the header.
Title: Me at the zoo
Channel: jawed
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw
Duration: 0:19
Transcript: creator-captions, en (youtube-captions)
Chapters: 0:00 Intro | 0:05 The cool thing | 0:17 End
[0:01] All right, so here we are, in front of the elephants
[0:05] the cool thing about these guys is that they have really...
[0:07] really really long trunks
[0:12] and that's cool
[0:14] (baaaaaaaaaaahhh!!)
[0:16] and that's pretty much all there is to sayvid2context learned from youtube-transcript-api's error taxonomy: blocked IPs and other failures come back with a stable code and a hint on how to recover.