YouTube API

Monitor YouTube channels and run async download, subtitle, and comment jobs.

Quick start

Create channel monitors for updates, then create asynchronous media jobs for videos that need download, subtitles, or comments.

API base https://kieapi.com

curl -X POST "https://kieapi.com/v1/youtube/monitors" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPIDER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "channel_id": "UC123",
    "channel_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@example/videos",
    "strategy": "auto",
    "check_interval_seconds": 900,
    "slow_check_interval_seconds": 43200,
    "quiet_first_check": true
  }'

curl -X POST "https://kieapi.com/v1/youtube/videos/abc123/subtitles" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPIDER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: youtube-subtitles-abc123-01" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "languages": ["en"],
    "include_auto": true,
    "format": "vtt"
  }'

curl -X POST "https://kieapi.com/v1/youtube/videos/abc123/downloads" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPIDER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: youtube-download-abc123-01" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "format": "bestvideo*+bestaudio/best",
    "max_spend_credits": 10300,
    "max_download_bytes": 1000000000,
    "max_worker_seconds": 1200
  }'

curl -X GET "https://kieapi.com/v1/youtube/media-jobs/ytjob_01j" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPIDER_API_KEY"

Authentication

Use a bearer token.

Team administrators manage API keys in Team Settings. Each key keeps its Team and billing scope when its creator leaves or switches Teams. Keys cannot manage members, billing or other keys.

Response shape

Monitor

The durable YouTube monitor, its target, settings, and per-strategy check state.

Strategies

RSS and yt-dlp polling are peer monitoring strategies; auto runs both independently.

Events

New video, updated video, reschedule, and monitor error events for downstream workflows.

Videos

The latest observed video records with first_seen_at and last_seen_at timestamps.

Media jobs

Download, subtitle, and ordinary comment extraction return 202 Accepted with queued media jobs instead of blocking public requests.

Artifacts and records

Completed media jobs expose server-owned artifact URLs plus paged subtitle and comment records under /v1/youtube.

Credits and safety limits

Billable writes reserve bounded Team Credits and capture only trusted successful results. Download bytes and worker seconds round up by 100 MB and 10 minutes; polling, pagination, and artifact reads are free.

Reference

Endpoint reference

OpenAPI-backed details for YouTube monitors, checks, events, videos, async media jobs, artifacts, subtitles, comments, and errors.

OpenAPI endpoint details

Interactive schemas, request bodies, response objects, and public error contracts load here.