YouTube Channels

YouTube Channels Scraper

A powerful tool for extracting detailed channel information from YouTube.

Check out our other YouTube scrapers: YouTube Comments | YouTube Videos

n8n node: n8n

Supply channel handles, URLs or IDs, or search YouTube for channels by keyword, and receive structured JSON data.

Why use this YouTube channel scraper?

• Look up or discover channels: supply handles, URLs or IDs, and combine them with keyword searches in the same run. Keyword search also works independently, without any channel inputs.
• Useful profile data in one row: collect channel identity, description, statistics, country, language, keywords, topics, status and thumbnails.
• Keep discovery provenance: search results include the query and rank, so you can trace why a channel appeared.
• Avoid duplicate records: channels found through more than one input are returned once per channelId; search results are ordered by rank within each query.
• Find links in the description: descriptionLinks extracts URLs present in the channel description. YouTube's Data API does not provide a separate structured list of the social links shown on every channel page.
• Join the scraper suite: channelId lets you connect channel records with matching videos and comments from our Videos and Comments Actors.

This Actor focuses on channel metadata and discovery. Use the Videos Actor to expand a channel into uploads and available transcripts, or the Comments Actor to collect comments from its uploads.

🎯 Features

Multiple Input Formats Supported:

• Channel handle: "@SailingLaVagabonde"
• Channel URL: https://www.youtube.com/@SailingLaVagabonde
• Channel ID URL: "youtube.com/channel/UCZdQjaSoLjIzFnWsDQOv4ww"
• Channel ID: "UCZdQjaSoLjIzFnWsDQOv4ww"
• Search keywords: "sailing documentary"; use | for alternatives in one query, such as sailing|boating (commas are not a multi-query separator).

Comprehensive Channel Data:

• Base Information

  • Title and description
  • URLs found in the channel description
  • Custom URL
  • Publication date
  • Country and language

• Channel Statistics

  • View count
  • Subscriber count
  • Video count
  • Hidden subscriber status

• Branding Details

  • Keywords
  • Default language
  • Country settings
  • Thumbnail URLs

• Channel Status

  • Privacy settings
  • Link status
  • Upload capabilities
  • Made for kids status

Use cases

• Channel research — compare channel descriptions, topics and statistics.
• Creator discovery — collect information about a supplied list of creators.
• Channel monitoring — compare subscriber, view and video counts across runs.
• Content research — examine channel topics, keywords and branding.

🚀 Getting started

1. Create or sign in to your Apify account.
2. Enter channel handles, channel URLs or channel IDs.
3. Run the Actor and collect your data.

💳 Pricing

In pay-per-event mode, the Actor charges for saved channel records and channel searches:

Event	Price	When it is charged
channel	$0.0005 per channel	For each channel record saved to the default dataset.
keyword_search	$0.02	Once per distinct searchQueries item per run, regardless of how many search result pages are fetched.

📥 Input format

{
  "channels": [
    "@SailingLaVagabonde",
    "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZdQjaSoLjIzFnWsDQOv4ww"
  ],
  "searchQueries": ["sailing documentary", "sailing|boating"],
  "maxChannelsPerQuery": 50,
  "searchOrder": "relevance"
}

Use channels, searchQueries, or both; searchQueries works independently as a separate channel discovery search and does not require channel handles, IDs, or URLs. Add each search query as a separate array item. To search for either of multiple alternatives in one query, use YouTube's | operator (for example, "sailing|boating"); commas are not interpreted as separate queries. Keyword search results include sourceQuery and searchRank, and records are returned in rank order for each query. Each distinct searchQueries item incurs one $0.02 keyword_search event per run, regardless of pagination.

📤 Output format

Channel data is returned as structured JSON. Example:

{
  "channelId": "UCZdQjaSoLjIzFnWsDQOv4ww",
  "title": "Sailing La Vagabonde",
  "description": "We're a sailing channel documenting our journey...",
  "descriptionLinks": [],
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZdQjaSoLjIzFnWsDQOv4ww",
  "sourceQuery": null,
  "searchRank": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2025-01-23T10:00:00+00:00",
  "customUrl": "@SailingLaVagabonde",
  "publishedAt": "2014-08-19T02:27:29Z",
  "viewCount": 298051885,
  "subscriberCount": 1520000,
  "videoCount": 358,
  "keywords": "sailing,travel,adventure,family,ocean",
  "defaultLanguage": "en",
  "country": "AU",
  "relatedPlaylists": {
    "uploads": "UULZdQjaSoLjIzFnWsDQOv4ww"
  },
  "privacyStatus": "public",
  "isLinked": true,
  "longUploadsStatus": "eligible",
  "madeForKids": false,
  "topicCategories": [
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing"
  ],
  "thumbnails": {
    "default": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/...",
    "medium": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/...",
    "high": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/..."
  }
}

Statistics are sample values, and description and thumbnail URLs are abbreviated. Actual results contain the values available when the Actor runs.

AI agents and integrations

Connect chat clients such as Claude and ChatGPT to Apify through the Apify MCP server to discover and run eligible Actors.

Structured records let agents work directly with channel IDs, descriptions and statistics.

Example requests for an agent configured to use this Actor:

Collect channel information and subscriber counts for these YouTube handles.

Return descriptions, video counts and topic categories for these channel IDs.

n8n node: n8n-nodes-youtube-channels-rental

✏️ API access

Access through Apify's API and automation features:

• REST API
• SDK integration
• Webhooks
• Automated workflows

For setup and reference documentation, see the Apify API documentation. For workflow automation, see the n8n integration guide.

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