Is the YouTube API free? Prices, limits and approval (2026)

November 8, 2026

Short answer

Yes. Google lists no fee for the YouTube Data API v3: every project gets 10,000 quota units a day, plus 100 search.list calls and 100 videos.insert calls in their own buckets. The limit is quota, not money, and more quota requires an API Compliance Audit. It stops at captions for videos you can't edit and at stored data older than 30 days.

Short answer: yes, and it is the most open of the big platform APIs. You need a Google Cloud project and an API key, with no approval to start. What you pay with is quota, and quota runs out faster than people expect for search and captions.

The official YouTube options at a glance

API	Who can use it	Approval	Free allowance	Reads other channels?
YouTube Data API v3	Anyone with a Google Cloud project	None to start; audit for more quota	10,000 units a day, plus 100 searches and 100 uploads source	Yes, public data
`videos.batchGetStats`	Same	None	Its own 10,000 units a day, since 3 June 2026 source	Yes
YouTube Analytics and Reporting APIs	Channel owners and content owners source	Owner access to the channel	Not stated on the overview	No. Your own channels
YouTube Researcher Program	Students, staff and faculty at accredited degree-granting institutions in about 60 countries source	Application	Increased Data API quota	Yes, for research

How the quota works

Every project starts with 100 search.list calls, 100 videos.insert calls and 10,000 units a day for everything else. Every request costs at least 1 unit, even an invalid one. Most reads cost 1 unit, and most writes cost 50 Google. Since 1 June 2026, search and uploads have had their own buckets revision history.

Method	Cost	Page size
`search.list`	1 unit, 100 calls a day	Up to 50 results source
`videos.list`, `channels.list`	1 unit	Takes a comma-separated list of IDs source
`commentThreads.list`	1 unit	Up to 100 threads source
`captions.list`	50 units	quota table
`captions.download`	200 units	Only if the user can edit the video source

What a free day buys

Search: 100 calls x 50 results = 5,000 search results a day at most. Search results don't carry view counts, so you add videos.list calls for stats.
Comments: 10,000 units at 100 threads a page is up to 1 million comment threads a day, if nothing else uses the quota.
Captions: with 50 units to list and 200 to download, 10,000 units would be 40 caption files a day, and only for videos you can edit. For someone else's video, the official API has no route.

The rule of thumb: stats and comments are cheap, search is capped, captions are effectively off the table for research.

Getting more quota

When you hit the limit you apply for an extension by completing an API Compliance Audit that states your use case. Extra quota may be used only for the approved use case, and a change of use case means a new audit developer policies. Google does not state a review time on these pages.

Two policy rules shape storage. Stored API data must be deleted or refreshed after 30 days, and statistics retrieved without user authorization may not be stored for more than 30 days. You also may not sell access to the API itself without YouTube's written approval source.

Researchers have a separate path. The Researcher Program gives accepted applicants more Data API quota. Applicants must be at an accredited, degree-granting, not-for-profit institution and free of any Alphabet affiliation, and research cannot be sold commercially program policies.

Which one fits you

Channel and video stats at modest volume: Data API v3, free.
Your own channel's watch time, revenue or audience: Analytics or Reporting API.
Academic research above the default quota: Researcher Program.
More than 100 searches a day, transcripts of other people's videos, or data kept past 30 days: you need something beyond the official API.

The free open-source route

yt-dlp (Unlicense) prints video metadata as JSON, saves subtitles and auto-captions, and can collect comments. Full YouTube support now needs a JavaScript runtime such as Deno yt-dlp.
youtube-transcript-api (MIT) fetches captions in Python. Its README warns that YouTube blocks most cloud provider IPs and that it relies on an undocumented part of YouTube that can break README.

Both run well on a laptop. On a server, expect blocks. YouTube's terms also forbid automated access except by public search engines following robots.txt, or with YouTube's prior written permission YouTube terms.

This is not legal advice. If your project depends on it, ask a lawyer who knows your use case and your country.

The pay-per-call option

If the official quota is the blocker, ScrapeIO's youtube search API returns search results with full stats for 2 credits, and youtube transcript API, youtube comments API and youtube channel videos API cost 1 credit each. No quota buckets, no daily reset: 300 requests a minute per key, and credits never expire.

Worked example: 500 searches a day is five times the official cap. On ScrapeIO it is 1,000 credits a day, about $1.88 at the Starter rate. Transcripts of 200 competitor videos cost 200 credits, about $0.38.

For a wider look at the alternatives, read YouTube API options in 2026 and YouTube Data API alternative. Endpoints are on the YouTube platform page, and the YouTube MCP server lets an AI agent call them.

Sources

Checked on 8 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change; follow the links before you decide.

100 free credits, no card. Credits never expire.

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