diff --git a/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py b/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py
index eb465c425a..033b50702c 100755
--- a/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py
+++ b/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py
@@ -86,6 +86,7 @@
     write_string,
     YoutubeDLCookieProcessor,
     YoutubeDLHandler,
+    PhantomJSwrapper,
 )
 from .cache import Cache
 from .extractor import get_info_extractor, gen_extractor_classes, _LAZY_LOADER
@@ -2146,6 +2147,7 @@ def print_debug_header(self):
 
         exe_versions = FFmpegPostProcessor.get_versions(self)
         exe_versions['rtmpdump'] = rtmpdump_version()
+        exe_versions['phantomjs'] = PhantomJSwrapper._version()
         exe_str = ', '.join(
             '%s %s' % (exe, v)
             for exe, v in sorted(exe_versions.items())
diff --git a/youtube_dl/utils.py b/youtube_dl/utils.py
index c67f95ac96..4d0685d83a 100644
--- a/youtube_dl/utils.py
+++ b/youtube_dl/utils.py
@@ -3895,6 +3895,10 @@ class PhantomJSwrapper(object):
 
     _TMP_FILE_NAMES = ['script', 'html', 'cookies']
 
+    @staticmethod
+    def _version():
+        return get_exe_version('phantomjs', version_re=r'([0-9.]+)')
+
     def __init__(self, extractor, required_version=None, timeout=10000):
         self.exe = check_executable('phantomjs', ['-v'])
         if not self.exe:
@@ -3905,7 +3909,7 @@ def __init__(self, extractor, required_version=None, timeout=10000):
         self.extractor = extractor
 
         if required_version:
-            version = get_exe_version(self.exe, version_re=r'([0-9.]+)')
+            version = self._version()
             if is_outdated_version(version, required_version):
                 self.extractor._downloader.report_warning(
                     'Your copy of PhantomJS is outdated, update it to version '