The Zoom API covers Meetings, Webinars, Phone, and Chat. The most common entry points are the Meetings and Recordings APIs: create meetings, generate join URLs, and fetch recordings and transcripts after the call. The Webinar API serves the events/marketing space with registration, reminders, and reports.

Authentication offers three app types. Server-to-Server OAuth is simplest for in-house backend calls — no user-authorization dance. OAuth is for third-party distribution. JWT is deprecated and only kept for legacy migration. All API calls are HTTPS, and access tokens are short-lived — refresh them on a regular cadence.

Webhooks are the main bridge to external systems: meeting started, ended, recording ready, participant joined — all push to your configured endpoint in real time. Zoom does not guarantee exactly-once delivery, so retries may produce duplicate events — your handler must be idempotent. Free Zoom accounts have a hard 40-minute cap per meeting, which matters for any paid-demo flow that depends on longer meetings.