ytscrape

ytscrape — Free Open-Source Python YouTube Scraper¶

Scrape YouTube from Python without an API key. Search, video and channel metadata, comments and replies, transcripts and channel uploads — plain HTTP, typed models, sync and async.

Get started Examples What's new in 2.0

ytscrape talks directly to YouTube's internal InnerTube API (the same endpoints the YouTube web app uses), parses responses into frozen, fully-typed dataclasses, and paginates for you.

Features¶

YouTube API without a key

No Google Cloud project, no credentials, no daily quota.
Search

Videos, channels, playlists, Shorts and movies with SearchFilter. Guide
Video & channel metadata

Numeric views and subscribers, datetimes, thumbnails. Models
Scrape YouTube comments

Every comment and reply with yt.comments(). Guide
YouTube transcripts in Python

Manual or auto-generated captions, any language. Guide
Channel uploads

Lazy channel_videos() over the Videos tab. Guide
Reliable

Retries with backoff, rate limiting, bot/consent detection. Guide
Async API

AsyncYouTube on httpx with concurrency limits. Guide

Quick example¶

pip install ytscrape

SyncAsync

from ytscrape import SearchFilter, YouTube

with YouTube() as yt:
    for video in yt.search("python tutorial", filter=SearchFilter.VIDEOS, max_results=5):
        print(video.title, video.views, video.url)

    transcript = yt.transcript("dQw4w9WgXcQ", languages=["en"])
    print(transcript.text[:200])

    for comment in yt.comments("dQw4w9WgXcQ", max_results=10):
        print(comment.author, comment.like_count, comment.text)

import asyncio
from ytscrape import AsyncYouTube

async def main() -> None:
    async with AsyncYouTube() as yt:
        results = await yt.search("python tutorial", max_results=5)
        async for video in results:
            details = await video.details()
            print(details.title, details.views, details.published_at)

asyncio.run(main())

How ytscrape Compares¶

	ytscrape	YouTube Data API	`yt-dlp`	Browser automation
API key required	❌	✅	❌	❌
Daily quota	❌	✅	❌	❌
Browser / driver needed	❌	❌	❌	✅
Search	✅	✅	✅	✅
Video metadata	✅	✅	✅	✅
Comments + replies	✅	✅ (quota)	✅	✅
Typed Python models	✅	❌	❌	❌
Async (`asyncio`) API	✅	❌	❌	varies
Downloads media	❌	❌	✅	✅
Install size	tiny	medium	large	huge

Rule of thumb: use yt-dlp when you need to download media, the official Data API when you need guaranteed, ToS-blessed access, and ytscrape when you need fast, key-less access to YouTube metadata and comments from Python.

How It Works¶

ytscrape speaks YouTube's private InnerTube API directly, with no browser in the loop:

Context extraction. On first use, ytscrape fetches youtube.com once and extracts the InnerTube context — the API key, client version, and visitor data — embedded in the page's initial JavaScript.
POST requests. Every subsequent call POSTs to one of YouTube's internal JSON endpoints — youtubei/v1/search, youtubei/v1/player, youtubei/v1/browse, or youtubei/v1/next — with that context attached as the request body.
Typed parsing. Responses are parsed from deeply-nested JSON into small, frozen dataclasses (Video, Channel, VideoDetails, Comment, etc.) with full type hints. The package ships py.typed, so mypy and pyright see every field.
Transparent pagination. Continuation tokens returned by YouTube are stored internally. Iterating the result object automatically fires the next page request whenever you exhaust the current batch — you never handle tokens manually.

Note

ytscrape accesses YouTube's private, undocumented endpoints. The API contracts and internal params values may change without notice. Use this library responsibly, respect YouTube's Terms of Service, and avoid aggressive request rates. It is provided for research and educational purposes — you are responsible for your usage.

Next Steps¶

Ready to make your first request? Head to the Quickstart to install ytscrape and run your first search in under five minutes. Prefer copy-paste scripts? See Examples (every feature has sync + async). For concurrent scraping, read the Async API guide.