ytdl-org/youtube-dl · error · ExtractorError

This content is only available for subscribers

Error message

This content is only available for subscribers

What it means

RayWenderlichIE._real_extract raises ExtractorError('This content is only available for subscribers', expected=True) when the downloaded lesson webpage contains the literal marker '>Subscribe to unlock'. raywenderlich.com (now Kodeco) gates most course lessons behind a paid subscription, and paid pages render that subscribe prompt instead of the lesson's video data (vimeo id or embedded JSON).

Source

Thrown at youtube_dl/extractor/raywenderlich.py:86

                if ordinal != lesson_id:
                    continue
                video_id = content.get('identifier')
                if video_id:
                    return compat_str(video_id)

    def _real_extract(self, url):
        mobj = re.match(self._VALID_URL, url)
        course_id, lesson_id = mobj.group('course_id', 'id')
        display_id = '%s/%s' % (course_id, lesson_id)

        webpage = self._download_webpage(url, display_id)

        thumbnail = self._og_search_thumbnail(
            webpage, default=None) or self._html_search_meta(
            'twitter:image', webpage, 'thumbnail')

        if '>Subscribe to unlock' in webpage:
            raise ExtractorError(
                'This content is only available for subscribers',
                expected=True)

        info = {
            'thumbnail': thumbnail,
        }

        vimeo_id = self._search_regex(
            r'data-vimeo-id=["\'](\d+)', webpage, 'vimeo id', default=None)

        if not vimeo_id:
            data = self._parse_json(
                self._search_regex(
                    r'data-collection=(["\'])(?P<data>{.+?})\1', webpage,
                    'data collection', default='{}', group='data'),
                display_id, transform_source=unescapeHTML, fatal=False)
            video_id = self._extract_video_id(
                data, lesson_id) or self._search_regex(

View on GitHub (pinned to 956b8c5855)

Solutions

1. Authenticate with an active subscriber account — export cookies from a logged-in browser session and pass them via --cookies.
2. Confirm the lesson is actually subscriber-only; some free lessons extract fine without login.
3. Update youtube-dl if the marker string changed, so the gate is detected/rejected accurately.
4. For entitled sessions that still fail, verify the cookie export includes the raywenderlich auth cookies.

Example fix

# before
youtube_dl 'https://videos.raywenderlich.com/courses/112/lessons/1'

# after
youtube_dl --cookies kodeco-cookies.txt 'https://videos.raywenderlich.com/courses/112/lessons/1'

try:
    info = ydl.extract_info(url)
except ExtractorError as e:
    if 'only available for subscribers' in str(e):
        retry_with_subscriber_cookies(url)

When it happens

Trigger: Extracting any course lesson URL (videos.raywenderlich.com/lessons/<id> or courses/<course_id>/lessons/<lesson_id>) while not authenticated as an entitled subscriber; the check is a plain substring test on the HTML, so any page containing '>Subscribe to unlock' triggers it, even before the extractor looks for vimeo ids or subscriber-only JSON.

Common situations: Logged-out extraction of paid course content; cookies for a free account without an active subscription; free accounts hitting pro-content after a site redesign changed the marker string (older/whitespace variants of the marker can also false-negative, causing downstream parse errors instead).

Related errors

• Video %s is locked
• This video is %s.
• No login info available, needed for using %s.
• Video %s is not available for free
• error['error_description']

AI-assisted analysis of ytdl-org/youtube-dl@956b8c5855 (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/764862df29a242a1. Report an issue: GitHub.