Best YouTube data APIs, 2026Every main way to get YouTube data.YouTube’s official API, its analytics and research routes, and the main data APIs, compared on what they return, how they charge and how you connect.
An editorial comparison of what each vendor publishes, checked 25 Sept 2026. Monocrawl is ours and listed first. How we compared
What are you building?
Channel stats, videos and Shorts for creator or influencer toolsA data API for any public channel. For a creator’s own audience and watch-time reports, YouTube’s Analytics API once they connect.
Keyword search and comments for brand monitoringAn option with keyword search and comments. YouTube’s official API allows 100 search calls a day by default.
Transcripts of public videos for AI, search or researchAn option that returns transcripts of public videos. YouTube’s official API downloads captions only for videos you can edit.
An AI agent that searches and reads YouTubeAn option with an MCP server, so the agent can call it directly.
Academic research with YouTube dataThe YouTube Researcher Program, which gives approved academic researchers as much quota as their research needs.
13options compared
8with an MCP server
10free to start
49sources, checked 25 Sept 2026
Four routes
YouTube’s official API reads public data within a daily quota. Its Analytics and Reporting APIs cover channels that authorise your app, and its Researcher Program serves academics. Data APIs read public YouTube data with an API key.
YouTube’s official API
YouTube Analytics and Reporting APIs
YouTube Researcher Program
Monocrawl and the vendors below
What they return
What each option lists on its own pages, and how you connect.
| YouTube data | Connect | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Option | Channels | Videos | Shorts | Comments | Search | Transcripts | Playlists | Community posts | REST API | MCP server | Sources |
| MonocrawlOur product | Our API | ||||||||||
| YouTube’s official APIOfficial, YouTube | – | – | – | 12345 | |||||||
| YouTube Analytics and Reporting APIsOfficial, connected channels | – | – | – | – | – | 6789 | |||||
| YouTube Researcher ProgramOfficial, researchers | – | – | – | – | 101112 | ||||||
| ApifyYouTube scraper actors | – | 1314151617 | |||||||||
| Bright DataYouTube Scraper API | – | – | 1819202122 | ||||||||
| DecodoWeb scraping API | – | – | – | – | 23242526 | ||||||
| EnsembleDataSocial data API | – | – | – | – | 272829 | ||||||
| OxylabsWeb Scraper API | – | – | – | – | 30313233 | ||||||
| ScrapingBeeWeb scraping API | – | – | – | – | 34353637 | ||||||
| SociaVaultSocial data API | 3839404142 | ||||||||||
| SupadataVideo transcript API | – | – | 4344454647 | ||||||||
| TranscriptAPIYouTube transcript API | – | 4849 | |||||||||
Pricing
A request, a result, a record and a unit are not the same size, and allowances reset on different schedules. Price your own workload with each vendor.
One key and one response format across 70+ platforms, with monitors for alerts.
Monthly plans
No published price The default quota is 10,000 units a day, plus 100 search calls.
Most reads cost 1 unit. Quotas reset at midnight Pacific Time; more needs an audit.
Worth knowingIts policies bar storing statistics such as subscriber counts for more than 30 days without the channel owner’s authorisation.
No published price
No published price Every request must be authorised by the owner of the data.
The Reporting API delivers bulk reports; the Analytics API answers targeted queries.
Worth knowingReports views, watch time and audience by age, gender and country, and can split them into Shorts, live streams and videos.
No published price
No published price Access is by approved application only.
Quota is set by what the research requires.
Worth knowingResearch can’t be sold commercially, and researchers must publish their findings.
No published price
$4.00 per 1,000 videos on the free plan
From $2.40 on higher plans. Comments $2.00 per 1,000 on the free plan. Starter plan $19 a month.
Worth knowingOne Apify-maintained actor covers videos, Shorts, channels and search; comments use another. Speech-to-text costs extra.
$5 of usage a month
$1.50 per 1,000 records, pay as you go
$499 a month includes 384,000 records.
Worth knowingScrapes live on each request. Keyword and hashtag discovery run as background jobs you collect later.
5,000 records a month
$1 per 1,000 requests on premium proxies, which its YouTube templates use
Prices exclude VAT. Its $19 monthly plan includes 19,000 of these requests.
Worth knowingIts MCP server offers the YouTube channel, video, subtitle and search templates as agent tools.
Free plan with 1,000 premium requests
$100 a month for 1,500 units a day
Resets daily at 00:00 UTC. 10 channel videos or 20 search results cost 1 unit.
Worth knowingAlso lists a channel’s live streams, and finds the Shorts that use a given song.
50 units a day
$49 a month on its Micro plan
Rates per 1,000 results depend on the site and JavaScript rendering. Media downloads cost $3 a GB.
Worth knowingAlso reports whether a video is eligible for AI training, and downloads its audio and video.
Free trial, up to 2,000 results
$19 a month for 75,000 credits
A YouTube request costs 5 credits. Prices exclude VAT.
Worth knowingIts YouTube API has three endpoints: search, video metadata and subtitles.
1,000 credits
$29 for 6,000 credits, one time
Each YouTube call costs 1 credit. Credits never expire.
Worth knowingEvery YouTube call costs 1 credit, including transcripts, community posts and trending Shorts.
50 credits
$5 a month for 300 credits, billed yearly
Pro is $17 a month for 3,000. A transcript, a video or 20 search results cost 1 credit.
Worth knowingCan generate a transcript with AI when a video has no captions, at 2 credits a minute.
100 credits a month
$5 a month for 1,000 credits
Top-ups $2.50 per 1,000. Only successful requests use credits.
Worth knowingEach paid call or page costs 1 credit, and a channel’s latest 15 uploads are free.
100 credits
Try a call
The same request in cURL, TypeScript or Python, and the recorded response for Red Bull’s public YouTube channel. No Google Cloud project and no YouTube API key.
GET /v1/youtube/channelcurl "https://www.monocrawl.com/v1/youtube/channel?handle=redbull" \
-H "x-api-key: mn_your_key_here"
Red Bull
@redbull
Selected public fields from the recorded response. Live values will differ.
Channel1 creditChannel videos1 creditChannel Shorts1 creditComments on a video1 creditKeyword search1 creditVideo transcript2 creditsPlaylist videos1 creditCommunity posts2 credits2.1sMedian response in our benchmark. 22 September 2026 catalogue benchmark. Median of recorded endpoint timings across 636 operations with a successful HTTP response. Includes network time; individual requests vary.
Questions
YouTube’s official API has no published price; use is capped by quota instead, at 10,000 units a day by default plus 100 search calls, and more needs a compliance audit. For public data, most data APIs let you start free: Monocrawl gives 1,000 credits every month, Bright Data 5,000 records a month, Apify $5 of usage a month, Oxylabs a trial of up to 2,000 results, Decodo 1,000 premium requests, ScrapingBee 1,000 credits, Supadata 100 credits a month, TranscriptAPI 100 credits, SociaVault 50 credits and EnsembleData 50 units a day.
Since June 2026, search has its own quota bucket: 100 calls a day by default, at 1 unit each, apart from the 10,000 units a day that other methods share. Each extra page of results counts as another call. More quota needs YouTube’s audit and quota extension form.
No. It downloads a caption track only when the user has permission to edit the video, at 200 quota units a call. Monocrawl returns a video’s spoken words as timestamped text when the video has captions. Apify, Bright Data, Decodo, Oxylabs, ScrapingBee, SociaVault, Supadata and TranscriptAPI also list transcripts, and Apify and Supadata can generate one with AI when a video has none.
Yes. YouTube’s official API returns a video’s public comment threads at 1 quota unit a call. Monocrawl, Apify, Bright Data, EnsembleData and SociaVault list comments too; SociaVault says about 1,000 top or 7,000 newest comments can be retrieved per video.
Monocrawl, Apify, Bright Data, Decodo, ScrapingBee, SociaVault, Supadata and TranscriptAPI publish their own MCP servers, so assistants such as Claude or Cursor can call them directly. Oxylabs’ MCP server scrapes any URL but lists no YouTube-specific tools.
Not with Monocrawl: you send your Monocrawl API key and get public YouTube data back, with no Google Cloud project, no YouTube API key and no quota audit. YouTube’s official API needs a Google Cloud project and an API key, plus OAuth for methods that require a user’s authorisation.
Method
What’s includedYouTube’s official API, its Analytics and Reporting APIs and its Researcher Program, plus widely used YouTube data APIs that come up across YouTube API, scraper and transcript searches and comparison lists, list YouTube data on their own pages, and publish their pricing or offer a trial.
What we comparedWhat each vendor publishes about its YouTube data, pricing, free allowance and access, read on its own pages. “Best” here means worth comparing, not a ranking from tests: we have not run their APIs.
About MonocrawlMonocrawl is our product and is listed first. Its details come from our live plans and catalogue.
1,000 free credits every month. No card required.
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