Does YouTube have an API?
Yes: the YouTube Data API reads public videos, channels, comments and search, within a free daily quota. SocialToAI reads its publicly visible videos, comments and accounts without a YouTube developer account: 8 interfaces from 2 credits a call (≈ $0.004–$0.0067), and failed calls are free. Official facts checked 2026-10-17.
The short answer
Yes: the YouTube Data API reads public videos, channels, comments and search, within a free daily quota.
What the official API allows
YouTube offers the official YouTube Data API. Any developer can enable it in a Google Cloud project and read public videos, channels, comments and search results with an API key, within a free daily quota; more quota requires a compliance audit.
Source: YouTube's own developer documentation, checked 2026-10-17. What a platform allows changes; its own pages are the authority.
Reading YouTube's public data with SocialToAI
SocialToAI is an API and MCP server for publicly visible content and account information. You need no YouTube account and no app review: one SocialToAI key, or signing in from Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cursor and Codex. Each call costs a fixed number of credits, and a failed call costs nothing.
| Interface | What it returns | Price key | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Find videos by keyword: text, author and views. | youtube.search | 2 |
| Detail | One video by ID or link: text, author, likes, comment count, views and publish time. | youtube.detail | 2 |
| Detail · include=transcript | One video by ID or link: full text and timed segments. | youtube.detail:transcript | 2 |
| Comments | The comments under one video: text, likes and reply count. | youtube.comments | 2 |
| Comments · reply_of | The comments under one video: text and likes. | youtube.comments:replies | 2 |
| User Profile | One account: name, bio, followers and post count. | youtube.user_profile | 2 |
| Channel posts | Get a page of the posts on a YouTube channel's Posts tab (once Community) by channel ID or handle, newest first. | youtube.community_posts | 2 |
| Post detail | Get one YouTube channel post (once a Community post) by ID or link. | youtube.community_post | 2 |
curl https://api.socialtoai.com/v1/search \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOCIALTOAI_KEY" \ -H "Idempotency-Key: $(uuidgen)" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "platform": "youtube", "query": "meteor shower" }'- No YouTube account, cookie or developer approval on your side.
- What comes back is what the platform shows publicly; commenters are anonymised.
- Every platform answers in the same response format, so the same code reads YouTube and the others.
- Prepaid credits from 2 credits a call; 100 free credits on sign-up, no card.
Sources
- YouTube: developers.google.com, checked 2026-10-17
- YouTube API on SocialToAI: every call and its credits, last tested 2026-10-17
- The live catalog: what is offered now and its credits, readable without a key
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