YouTube Transcript API returns "Could not retrieve a transcript" error - IP blocking or rate limiting? [closed]

17 hours ago 1
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I'm using `youtube-transcript-api` (v1.2.3) to fetch video transcripts. After making ~40 requests while testing, I'm now getting blocking errors for all videos.

Error

Could not retrieve a transcript for the video! This is most likely caused by: - You have done too many requests and your IP has been blocked by YouTube - You are doing requests from an IP belonging to a cloud provider

My Setup

Running on local machine (residential ISP, **not** cloud provider)

Made requests over 30 minutes during testing

Now ALL videos fail (even popular ones like "Me at the zoo")

Code

python from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi api = YouTubeTranscriptApi() transcript = api.fetch('jNQXAC9IVRw', languages=\['en'\]) text = ' '.join(\[entry\['text'\] for entry in transcript.transcript\])

Questions

1. **Is this temporary rate limiting?** If so, how long does it typically last?

2. **What are the actual rate limits** for this API?

3. **For production use** (fetching once daily from ~10 channels), how should I structure requests to avoid this?

This is for a personal project. I hit this during development testing, not production usage.

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