diff --git a/doc/conf.py.in b/doc/conf.py.in
index 1a661e95c..0e0b619ed 100644
--- a/doc/conf.py.in
+++ b/doc/conf.py.in
@@ -41,10 +41,31 @@ needs_sphinx = '4.1.2'
 extensions = [
     'breathe',
     'sphinx.ext.autodoc',
+    # Add autoapi extension only if running in readthedocs workflow, when running with cmake
+    # it gets replace by empty value because @AUTOAPI_EXTENSION@ is not defined.
+    # We use autoapi in readthedocs because it can parse code directly (code generated by swig)
+    # to access doc strings. The benefit is that we don't need to do a full build of the library
+    # to create working libdnf5 python module which is required by autodoc to get doc string.
+    # We can't use autoapi in our regular builds because it is not currently packaged in fedora,
+    # but this is not a problem because regular builds have access to the full working python
+    # module and can use autodoc normally.
+    @AUTOAPI_EXTENSION@
 ]
 breathe_projects = {'dnf5': '@CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR@/xml/'}
 breathe_default_project = 'dnf5'
 
+# The autoapi config is only used doc/setup.py in readthedocs workflow (not by cmake)
+autoapi_type = 'python'
+autoapi_dirs = ['@CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR@/../bindings/python3/libdnf5', '@CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR@/../bindings/python3/libdnf5_cli']
+autoapi_root = "api/python/autoapi"
+autoapi_python_use_implicit_namespaces = True
+# We don't want to automatically generate the full documentation.
+# Instead we use directives, this allows greater control and both
+# cpp and python docs can have the same look and layout.
+autoapi_generate_api_docs = False
+autoapi_add_toctree_entry = False
+autoapi_add_objects_to_toctree = False
+
 if sphinx.version_info[:3] > (4, 0, 0):
     tags.add('sphinx4')
     extensions += ['dbusdoc']
diff --git a/doc/requirements.txt b/doc/requirements.txt
index cd6467ed8..32089dc94 100644
--- a/doc/requirements.txt
+++ b/doc/requirements.txt
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
 breathe
+sphinx-autoapi
diff --git a/doc/setup.py b/doc/setup.py
index facb05022..6747cab9c 100644
--- a/doc/setup.py
+++ b/doc/setup.py
@@ -39,7 +39,17 @@ def generate_bindings_from_dir(in_dir, out_dir):
 
 # configure the .in files
 configure("Doxyfile.in", "Doxyfile", {"@CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR@": os.path.join(DIR, "..")})
-configure("conf.py.in", "conf.py", {"@CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR@": DIR})
+configure("conf.py.in", "conf.py", {"@CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR@": DIR, "@AUTOAPI_EXTENSION@": "\'autoapi.extension\',"})
+
+# In place replace autodoc directives with autoapidoc directives.
+# Our readthedocs workflow uses autoapidoc instead of autodoc because
+# it is able to parse code generated by swig without including the
+# module -> therefore there is no need for a full build in order to
+# generate python docs.
+for in_file in os.listdir(os.path.join(DIR + "/api/python")):
+    if in_file.endswith(".rst"):
+        file = os.path.join("api/python/", in_file)
+        configure(file, file, {"autoclass": "autoapiclass"})
 
 
 # run doxygen manually