yt-dlp works locally but fails on Render (FastAPI) with “Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” error [closed]

I’m using yt-dlp inside a FastAPI backend to extract audio stream URLs from YouTube videos.

Works locally

When I run the code on my local machine, everything works fine and returns the stream URL.

Fails on Render (free tier)

After deploying to Render (free tier), I get this error:

ERROR: [youtube] YWIhwplfx4Q: Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication.

Code

def get_stream_url(video_url): ydl_opt = { "format": 'bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestaudio', 'quiet': True, 'noplaylist':True } try: with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opt) as ydl: info = ydl.extract_info(video_url, download=False) if info.get("age_limit", 0) >= 18 or info.get("availability") == "needs_auth": return [] return info["url"] except Exception: return []

Question

Is this solvable without a paid infrastructure?