How to Get TikTok Data Without the Official API (Video Stats, User Profiles, and More)

Kelvin — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 21:12:48 +0000

TikTok's official API is locked down. The Research API requires academic affiliation. The Business API requires partnership approval. And even if you get access, rate limits and data restrictions make it hard to build anything useful.

If you just need public video stats, user profiles, or a list of someone's recent videos, there's a much simpler path.

The Problem

Here's what TikTok's official options look like in 2026:

Research API: Academic affiliation required. Commercial use denied.
Business API: Partnership approval. Wait time: weeks to months.
Login Kit / Graph API: Only for apps with TikTok login integration.

Meanwhile, all you want is: "How many likes does this video have?" or "How many followers does this creator have?"

A Simpler Alternative

I built a TikTok Scraper API that returns public TikTok data through simple GET requests. No TikTok credentials, no approval process, no OAuth.

Three endpoints:

GET /video?url=... — Full video details: likes, comments, shares, plays, cover image, music, hashtags, duration
GET /user?username=... — User profile: followers, following, total likes, video count, bio, verified status
GET /user/videos?username=...&count=10 — Recent videos with all metadata

Quick Start

Python — Get Video Stats

import requests

headers = {
    "X-RapidAPI-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
    "X-RapidAPI-Host": "YOUR_API_HOST"
}

video = requests.get(
    "https://YOUR_API_HOST/video",
    params={"url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@khaby.lame/video/7356311827498498336"},
    headers=headers
).json()

print(f"Likes: {video['likes']:,}")
print(f"Comments: {video['comments']:,}")
print(f"Shares: {video['shares']:,}")
print(f"Plays: {video['plays']:,}")

Python — Analyze a Creator

user = requests.get(
    "https://YOUR_API_HOST/user",
    params={"username": "khaby.lame"},
    headers=headers
).json()

print(f"Followers: {user['followers']:,}")
print(f"Total Likes: {user['totalLikes']:,}")
print(f"Videos: {user['videoCount']}")
print(f"Verified: {user['verified']}")

JavaScript — Get User's Recent Videos

const response = await fetch(
  'https://YOUR_API_HOST/user/videos?username=khaby.lame&count=5',
  {
    headers: {
      'X-RapidAPI-Key': 'YOUR_API_KEY',
      'X-RapidAPI-Host': 'YOUR_API_HOST'
    }
  }
);

const data = await response.json();
data.videos.forEach(v => {
  console.log(`${v.title} — ${v.plays.toLocaleString()} plays`);
});

What You Can Build With This

Influencer Dashboard: Pull follower counts and engagement rates for a list of creators. Compare their performance over time.

Content Research Tool: Fetch a creator's recent videos, rank by engagement, identify what formats and topics perform best.

Competitor Tracker: Monitor competitor TikTok accounts. Get notified when they post new content or hit engagement milestones.

Marketing Report Generator: Automatically pull campaign video stats into a report — likes, shares, comments, plays — without manual screenshots.

Pricing

Plan	Price	Requests/month
Basic	Free	50
Pro	$7	2,000
Ultra	$15	8,000

Free tier to test. No credit card required for the basic plan.

Try it on RapidAPI →

Questions or feature requests? Drop a comment below.

How to Extract YouTube Transcripts for Your AI App (No API Key Needed)

Kelvin — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:50:42 +0000

If you're building an AI app that needs to process video content — RAG pipelines, summarizers, content analyzers — you've probably hit the same wall I did: getting transcripts from YouTube is way harder than it should be.

YouTube's official Data API requires OAuth setup, has strict quota limits (10,000 units/day), and doesn't even return transcripts directly. You'd need to chain multiple endpoints together just to get subtitle text. For a simple "give me the transcript" use case, that's overkill.

I built a lightweight API that solves this in one request.

What It Does

The YouTube Transcript API extracts transcripts from any YouTube video — no YouTube API key, no OAuth, no quota headaches. It works with both manual captions and auto-generated subtitles.

Seven endpoints, one API key:

/transcript — Timestamped segments in JSON
/transcript/text — Plain text, perfect for feeding into LLMs
/transcript/srt — Standard SRT subtitle format
/transcript/vtt — WebVTT format
/languages — List all available subtitle languages
/video-info — Video metadata (title, author, duration, views, thumbnail)
/batch — Fetch up to 5 transcripts in one request

All endpoints accept full YouTube URLs — no need to parse video IDs yourself.

Quick Start: Get a Transcript in 3 Lines

Python

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://youtube-transcript-api14.p.rapidapi.com/transcript/text",
    params={"videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ"},
    headers={
        "X-RapidAPI-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
        "X-RapidAPI-Host": "youtube-transcript-api14.p.rapidapi.com"
    }
)

transcript = response.text
# Feed this directly into your LLM

JavaScript

const response = await fetch(
  'https://youtube-transcript-api14.p.rapidapi.com/transcript/text?videoId=dQw4w9WgXcQ',
  {
    headers: {
      'X-RapidAPI-Key': 'YOUR_API_KEY',
      'X-RapidAPI-Host': 'youtube-transcript-api14.p.rapidapi.com'
    }
  }
);

const transcript = await response.text();

That's it. No OAuth flow, no token refresh, no quota management.

Use Case: Build a Video Q&A Bot

Here's a practical example — a script that grabs a transcript and feeds it into an LLM for summarization:

import requests

API_KEY = "YOUR_RAPIDAPI_KEY"
HEADERS = {
    "X-RapidAPI-Key": API_KEY,
    "X-RapidAPI-Host": "youtube-transcript-api14.p.rapidapi.com"
}

# Step 1: Get video info
info = requests.get(
    "https://youtube-transcript-api14.p.rapidapi.com/video-info",
    params={"videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ"},
    headers=HEADERS
).json()

print(f"Title: {info['title']}")
print(f"Author: {info['author']}")

# Step 2: Get plain text transcript
transcript = requests.get(
    "https://youtube-transcript-api14.p.rapidapi.com/transcript/text",
    params={"videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ"},
    headers=HEADERS
).text

# Step 3: Feed into your LLM
prompt = f"""Summarize this video transcript in 3 bullet points:

{transcript}"""

# Pass `prompt` to OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, or any LLM

Use Case: Batch Process a Playlist

Need transcripts from multiple videos? The /batch endpoint handles up to 5 at once:

response = requests.get(
    "https://youtube-transcript-api14.p.rapidapi.com/batch",
    params={
        "videoIds": "dQw4w9WgXcQ,jNQXAC9IVRw,9bZkp7q19f0",
        "lang": "en"
    },
    headers=HEADERS
)

results = response.json()
for result in results:
    if result.get("segments"):
        print(f"Video {result['videoId']}: {len(result['segments'])} segments")

Use Case: Download Subtitles for Video Editing

If you need subtitle files instead of raw text:

# Get SRT format
srt = requests.get(
    "https://youtube-transcript-api14.p.rapidapi.com/transcript/srt",
    params={"videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ"},
    headers=HEADERS
).text

with open("subtitles.srt", "w") as f:
    f.write(srt)

# Works with VLC, Premiere Pro, Final Cut, DaVinci Resolve

Pricing

There's a free tier to test with:

Plan	Price	Requests
Basic	Free	100/month
Pro	$5/month	3,000/month
Ultra	$15/month	20,000/month

When to Use This vs. youtube-transcript-api (Python Library)

The popular youtube-transcript-api Python library is great for local scripts. But if you're building a production app, you'll run into issues:

Rate limiting: YouTube blocks your server IP after ~100 requests/minute
Maintenance: YouTube changes their frontend regularly, breaking scrapers
Deployment: Installing the library adds dependencies to your stack

An API handles all of this for you — proxy rotation, YouTube changes, uptime — so you can focus on your app logic.

DEV Community: Kelvin

How to Get TikTok Data Without the Official API (Video Stats, User Profiles, and More)

The Problem

A Simpler Alternative

Quick Start

Python — Get Video Stats

Python — Analyze a Creator

JavaScript — Get User's Recent Videos

What You Can Build With This

Pricing

How to Extract YouTube Transcripts for Your AI App (No API Key Needed)

What It Does

Quick Start: Get a Transcript in 3 Lines

Python

JavaScript

Use Case: Build a Video Q&A Bot

Use Case: Batch Process a Playlist

Use Case: Download Subtitles for Video Editing

Pricing

When to Use This vs. youtube-transcript-api (Python Library)

Links