YouTube Transcript API returns "Could not retrieve a transcript" error - IP blocking or rate limiting?
23:21 26 Jan 2026

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.

python youtube-api