diff --git a/youtube_dl/extractor/peertube.py b/youtube_dl/extractor/peertube.py
index 87c7fdf15..1b58a859b 100644
--- a/youtube_dl/extractor/peertube.py
+++ b/youtube_dl/extractor/peertube.py
@@ -489,6 +489,8 @@ class PeerTubeIE(InfoExtractor):
     def _get_subtitles(self, host, video_id):
         video_captions = self._download_json(
             'https://%s/api/v1/videos/%s/captions' % (host, video_id), video_id, fatal=False)
+        if not video_captions:
+            return None
 
         subtitles = {}
         for entry in video_captions.get('data'):