Pricing · Comparison · Supadata
YouTube Transcript API Pricing Compared (2026): What 1,000 Transcripts Really Cost
Supadata, TranscriptAPI and YTAPI price transcripts in three different ways. What each costs at steady, uneven and light volume, and what gets billed.
· 5 min read · YTAPI
Three YouTube transcript APIs, three pricing models: monthly plans whose credits reset, a small subscription with cheap top-ups, and one-time packs that never expire. Headline prices say little on their own. What you pay depends on how many transcripts you need, how evenly they arrive, and what each provider bills for.
We make one of the three, so we've kept the arithmetic visible. Prices are from each provider's site on September 26, 2026; check them before you decide, since they change.
The plans at a glance
| Supadata | TranscriptAPI | YTAPI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Monthly plans; credits reset each month | Subscription with 1,000 credits a month, plus top-ups | One-time packs; credits never expire |
| Entry price | $5/mo for 300 credits (billed annually) | $5/mo, or $54/year | $9 for 2,000 credits |
| Larger volumes | $17 for 3,000; $47 for 30,000; $297 for 300,000; $897 for 1,000,000 (per month) | Top-ups at $2.50 per 1,000 (monthly) or $1.50 (annual) | $29 for 10,000; $79 for 50,000 |
| Overage | Auto-recharge: $10 per 1,000 (Basic, Pro), $10 per 5,000 (Mega), $20 per 20,000 (Giga, Supa) | Top-ups | Buy another pack |
| Free | 100 credits every month | 100 credits on signup | 200 credits on signup |
| Rate limit | 1 to 100 requests per second by plan | 200 per minute (monthly), 300 (annual) | 300, 600 or 3,000 per minute by pack |
A transcript costs one credit on all three. TranscriptAPI and YTAPI bill a cache hit like any other request.
Steady volume: roughly a tie at scale
If you need about the same number of transcripts every month, here is what a month costs. For YTAPI we use the price per 1,000 of the pack you'd buy for that volume, since unused credits carry over.
| Transcripts per month | Supadata | TranscriptAPI (monthly) | TranscriptAPI (annual) | YTAPI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $15.00 | $5.00 | $4.50 | $4.50 |
| 5,000 | $37.00 | $15.00 | $10.50 | $14.50 ($7.90 with the 50,000 pack) |
| 10,000 | $47.00 | $27.50 | $18.00 | $29.00 ($15.80 with the 50,000 pack) |
| 30,000 | $47.00 | $77.50 | $48.00 | $47.40 |
| 100,000 | $187.00 | $252.50 | $153.00 | $158.00 |
Supadata figures use the cheapest plan plus auto-recharge for that volume: Basic plus one recharge at 1,000, Pro plus two recharges at 5,000, Mega plus recharges at 100,000.
At steady volume, TranscriptAPI's annual plan and YTAPI's 50,000 pack cost about the same, around $1.50 to $1.60 per 1,000. Supadata's Mega plan matches them if you use close to 30,000 credits every month, and costs more when you use less, because the rest resets. The monthly TranscriptAPI plan costs noticeably more above a few thousand transcripts a month.
Uneven volume: where credits that reset cost you
Real usage is rarely flat. A common pattern: backfill a large archive once, then keep up with new videos. Say 50,000 transcripts in the first month, then 2,000 a month for the rest of the year, 72,000 in total.
| Year total | |
|---|---|
| Supadata (cheapest plan each month: Mega, then Pro) | $274 |
| TranscriptAPI (monthly) | $210 |
| TranscriptAPI (annual) | $144 |
| YTAPI (one 50,000 pack, two 10,000 packs, one 2,000 pack) | $146 |
With plans that reset, you pay for capacity in the quiet months too, or keep switching plans. Top-ups and packs that don't expire follow your actual usage. TranscriptAPI's annual plan and YTAPI end up level here. The difference is commitment: $54 a year upfront, versus nothing until you buy a pack.
Light or occasional use
Side projects, prototypes and internal tools often need a few hundred transcripts a month, and some months none at all.
- About 3,000 transcripts over a year: YTAPI costs $18 (two $9 packs). TranscriptAPI costs $54 on the annual plan, or $60 over twelve months on the monthly one, and includes far more credits than you'd use. Supadata's free plan covers 100 a month, and Basic ($60 a year) covers up to 300.
- Under 100 a month: Supadata's free plan costs nothing, month after month. That's the cheapest option at very low volume.
What gets billed
Price per credit is only half of it. What uses a credit matters as much.
- Failed requests. YTAPI bills only HTTP 200 responses: videos without captions (
404), rate limits (429) and server errors are free. TranscriptAPI bills successful requests and doesn't bill408or404. - Videos without captions. Supadata can generate a transcript with AI when a video has no captions, billed at 2 credits per minute of video, so a 30-minute video uses 60 credits. That's a real feature the other two don't offer. YTAPI returns a free
404instead; TranscriptAPI doesn't state that it generates transcripts. - Everything else on the same key. On YTAPI, basic video info and search suggestions are free, and video details, playlists, channels and search pages cost 1 credit each. Check each provider's docs for how they bill metadata and search.
Time is a cost too
Retries don't show up on the invoice, but they show up in your users' wait. In our latency test on uncached videos, 15% of TranscriptAPI's first requests returned 408 and needed a retry (unbilled, but slow), and Supadata's slowest 10% took over 15 seconds. If a person waits on the response, that matters more than a few cents per 1,000.
Which pricing fits you
- Steady, high volume, and happy to commit for a year: TranscriptAPI's annual plan or YTAPI's 50,000 pack cost about the same. Choose on speed and reliability for the videos your users actually request.
- About 30,000 a month, every month, or you need other platforms or AI transcripts: Supadata's Mega plan.
- Uneven or unpredictable volume: credits that don't reset (TranscriptAPI's top-ups or YTAPI's packs), and ideally no annual commitment.
- A few transcripts a month: Supadata's free plan, or a $9 YTAPI pack that doesn't expire.
Whatever you pick, try it on your own videos first. YTAPI gives you 200 free credits, no card needed, and only successful responses use them. YTAPI's packs are on the homepage, and if you're moving from another provider there are guides for Supadata and TranscriptAPI.
FAQ
Do unused credits expire?
It depends on the provider. Supadata's plan credits reset every month. TranscriptAPI's monthly credits reset, while its top-ups don't. YTAPI's packs never expire.
Is there a free tier?
Yes, on all three: 200 credits on signup for YTAPI, 100 for TranscriptAPI, and 100 credits every month on Supadata's free plan.
Does a long video cost more?
Not on any of the three when you fetch existing captions: one transcript is one credit. The exception is Supadata's AI transcription for videos without captions, billed per minute of video.