How to track participants during the meeting via the Zoom API

Updated at:

September 1, 2025

Written By:

Aydin Schwartz

Question

People commonly ask on the Zoom Developer Forum:

How can I reliably get the current participants in an active Zoom meeting (including when people move between breakout rooms)?

Answer

For real-time, reliable participant presence (including breakout rooms), use participant webhook events rather than polling the Metrics participants endpoint. Then maintain your own in-memory/database state as events arrive.

  1. Subscribe to participant webhooks:

    • meeting.participant_joined
    • meeting.participant_joined_breakout_room
    • and the corresponding participant leave events

  2. On each “joined” event, add/update the participant in your store with their current context (e.g., meeting vs. which breakout room).

  3. On each “left” event, update/remove the participant accordingly. This event-driven list will stay accurate as users join/leave and move between breakout rooms.

Zoom Developer Forum Examples

Some examples of this question are:

The API to get transcripts, recordings, and metadata from meetings.

Get transcripts, recordings, and metadata from meetings.

Product

References: