Media transcript

When to use this

Pass a public reel or video URL with a known duration of at most 120 seconds. Speech-to-text costs 5 credits when it succeeds; a cached transcript costs 1 credit because speech-to-text does not run again. Photos, videos without a known duration, longer videos, unavailable audio and private media cannot be transcribed. Transcription is machine-generated and can contain errors.

Parameters

All parameters go in the query string.

Example request

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your key, or set LURKAPI_KEY for the code. Get a free key.

curl "https://api.lurkapi.com/v2/instagram/media/transcript?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Freel%2FDdl5eH-u4le%2F" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const params = new URLSearchParams({
  url: "https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ddl5eH-u4le/",
});
const res = await fetch(`https://api.lurkapi.com/v2/instagram/media/transcript?${params}`, {
  headers: { "x-api-key": process.env.LURKAPI_KEY },
});
const data = await res.json();
if (!data.success) throw new Error(`${data.code}: ${data.error}`);
console.log(data.segments);

import os
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.lurkapi.com/v2/instagram/media/transcript",
    params={
        "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ddl5eH-u4le/",
    },
    headers={"x-api-key": os.environ["LURKAPI_KEY"]},
    timeout=60,
)
data = res.json()
if not data["success"]:
    raise RuntimeError(f"{data['code']}: {data['error']}")
print(data["segments"])

Example response

A real response from this endpoint, captured from the live API and trimmed to a couple of items. Strings over 96 characters (mostly signed media URLs) are cut short and end in ….

{
  "success": true,
  "credits_remaining": 999995,
  "credits_charged": 5,
  "code": "Ddl5eH-u4le",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/Ddl5eH-u4le/",
  "transcript": "Caitlin Clark is just a normal girl from Iowa, raised to do normal stuff…",
  "source": "speech_to_text",
  "language": "en",
  "duration_s": 30.0248125,
  "segments": [
    {
      "start": 0.3,
      "end": 4.92,
      "text": "Caitlin Clark is just a normal girl from Iowa, raised to do normal stuff."
    },
    {
      "start": 5.12,
      "end": 9.22,
      "text": "Cereal for breakfast, football on Sundays, golf on her days off."
    },
    {
      "start": 9.46,
      "end": 11.72,
      "text": "Eventually, she grew up and got a job."
    },
    {
      "start": 11.94,
      "end": 20.48,
      "text": "At this job, she sells out a variety of arenas, shoots from distances pr…"
    },
    {
      "start": 20.72,
      "end": 25.84,
      "text": "The media finds all of this extremely interesting, but to her, this is all totally normal."
    },
    {
      "start": 26.62,
      "end": 28.26,
      "text": "Nothing special to see here."
    }
  ]
}

Response fields

Every field of a successful response. [] marks a list: a[].b is the b of each item in a. nullable fields can be null; optional fields can be missing.

Caching and freshness

Responses are cached for up to 1 hour, so a repeat call within that window can return the same data. It still costs 1 credit.

Errors

Errors return { success: false, error, code, docs } with the HTTP status below. Validation errors, 401/402/429 rejections and 5xx failures are free; not_found is charged (how charging works). All error codes.

Use it in Claude

Once LurkAPI is connected to Claude, this endpoint is the instagram_media_transcript tool. Ask in plain English, for example:

Use LurkAPI's instagram_media_transcript with url "https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ddl5eH-u4le/" and summarize what you find.

Claude calls instagram_media_transcript with arguments like these, and each call costs 1 credit:

{
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ddl5eH-u4le/"
}

Tool results skip nulls and empty lists to save tokens.