Zoom Developer Forum

How to track participants during the meeting via the Zoom API

Published:
August 29, 2025
Updated:
August 12, 2026
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
  1. On each “joined” event, add/update the participant in your store with their current context (e.g., meeting vs. which breakout room).

  2. 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.

You can also use Recall.ai's API to get recordings from Zoom and retrieve participant lists, join times, and more.

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Written By:
Aydin Schwartz