YouTube Scraper: Search, Channels, Playlists & Video Details

YouTube Scraper

YouTube Scraper collects YouTube search results, every video of a channel (Videos, Shorts and Live tabs), every video of a playlist, and full details for single videos. It returns one JSON item per video, channel or playlist, with optional full video details. It costs $1.50 per 1,000 listed items and $3 per 1,000 detailed videos, plus $0.00005 per run.

No YouTube Data API key is needed and there is no daily quota: the actor reads YouTube's public pages.

Features

• Scrape YouTube search results for any keyword, as videos, channels or playlists, sorted by relevance, upload date, view count or rating, and filtered by upload date (last hour, today, this week, this month, this year).
• Export all videos of a YouTube channel, including the Shorts and Live tabs, with a channel profile item (subscribers, video count, description, handle, avatar, RSS URL).
• Export a YouTube playlist to CSV or Excel, every video with its position in the list.
• Get YouTube video views, likes and tags without the API: exact counts, publish date, description, category and subscriber count for a list of video URLs.
• Find YouTube channels in a niche with searchType: "channel", with subscriber counts.
• Get new uploads of a YouTube channel: with onlyNewVideos a scheduled run returns and charges only videos it has not delivered before.
• Accepts channel URLs or @handles, playlist URLs or IDs, and watch, youtu.be, Shorts, embed and live video URLs.

Use cases

• Keyword and SEO research: see which videos and channels rank for a search term, with their views and upload dates.
• Competitor tracking and influencer discovery: record a competitor's new uploads and view counts, or list the channels on a topic.
• Content audits: pull every video of a channel, sort by views, and compare Shorts against long-form uploads.
• Datasets for AI and analytics: collect video metadata at scale and pass the URLs to the transcript and comments actors listed below.

Input

Search queries, channels, playlists and single videos can be combined in one run.

{
  "searchQueries": ["python tutorial"],
  "searchType": "video",
  "searchSort": "view_count",
  "searchUploadDate": "year",
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 100,
  "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown"],
  "channelTabs": ["videos", "shorts"],
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 0,
  "playlistUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_ZCJB-3pi"],
  "maxVideosPerPlaylist": 0,
  "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"],
  "fetchDetailsForListedVideos": false
}

Field	Type	Default	What it does
searchQueries	array	[]	Keywords to search, one per line.
searchType	string	video	video, channel or playlist.
searchSort	string	relevance	relevance, upload_date, view_count or rating.
searchUploadDate	string	any	any, hour, today, week, month or year.
maxResultsPerQuery	integer	50	Results per query; 0 means as many as YouTube returns.
channelUrls	array	[]	Channel URLs or handles.
channelTabs	array	["videos"]	Any of videos, shorts, streams.
maxVideosPerChannel	integer	100	Per channel and per tab; 0 means all.
playlistUrls	array	[]	Playlist URLs or IDs.
maxVideosPerPlaylist	integer	0	0 means all.
videoUrls	array	[]	Videos to fetch full details for.
fetchDetailsForListedVideos	boolean	false	Fetch full details for every video found via search, channels and playlists (one extra request per video).
concurrency	integer	5	Parallel detail requests, 1 to 20.
proxyConfiguration	object	no proxy	Optional Apify Proxy settings.
onlyNewVideos	boolean	false	Monitor mode: output and charge only videos not delivered on an earlier run.
monitorStoreName	string	empty	Key-value store that remembers delivered videos. Empty means a name derived from the targets and filters.

Get new uploads of a YouTube channel

Turn on onlyNewVideos to get only the videos a channel uploaded since your last run:

{ "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown"], "channelTabs": ["videos", "shorts"], "maxVideosPerChannel": 0, "onlyNewVideos": true }

The actor remembers delivered video IDs in a named key-value store in your Apify account and skips them on the next run, so they are neither output nor charged. The first run returns every video up to the limits and fills the store.

How to set up new-upload alerts (a ready task is on the example page Get new uploads of a YouTube channel):

1. Save the input above as an Apify task.
2. Add an Apify schedule for the task, daily or weekly.
3. Add an integration on the task (email, Slack, Google Sheets, Make, Zapier or a webhook) that fires when a run succeeds. Each run's dataset then holds only the new videos.

Details:

• A channel tab lists newest first, so a run stops reading it at the first video it already knows. The channel row is returned once, on the first run.
• Known videos still count towards maxVideosPerChannel, maxVideosPerPlaylist and maxResultsPerQuery. Set them to 0 to watch everything; older videos the first run did not reach are not picked up later.
• Video URLs in videoUrls are always returned and charged.
• Without monitorStoreName each different input keeps its own history; the run log names the store. Schedule one run per store.

Output

A listed video from a search:

{
  "type": "video",
  "videoId": "lIId8IDP6TU",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIId8IDP6TU",
  "title": "Lecture 2 : Strings & Conditional Statements | Python Full Course",
  "description": "This lecture was made with a lot of love …",
  "channelName": "Shradha Khapra",
  "channelId": "UC1XBh-m27kkgwLAwu_SRJBg",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@shradhaKD",
  "channelIsVerified": false,
  "publishedTimeText": "2 years ago",
  "publishedAt": "2024-08-19T14:10:45.184Z",
  "durationText": "55:41",
  "durationSeconds": 3341,
  "viewCountText": "6,255,142 views",
  "viewCount": 6255142,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lIId8IDP6TU/hq720.jpg",
  "isLive": false,
  "badges": [],
  "source": "search:python tutorial",
  "position": 1
}

A detailed video (from videoUrls or with fetchDetailsForListedVideos) adds likeCount, likeCountText, the full description, keywords, category, uploadDate, isFamilySafe, channelSubscriberCount, channelSubscriberCountText and detailed: true, and its publishedAt is the exact publish date.

A channel item (first item for each channel URL):

{
  "type": "channel",
  "channelId": "UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw",
  "handle": "@3blue1brown",
  "handleUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown",
  "title": "3Blue1Brown",
  "description": "…",
  "subscriberCountText": "8.55M subscribers",
  "subscriberCount": 8550000,
  "videoCountText": "242 videos",
  "videoCount": 242,
  "avatarUrl": "…",
  "rssUrl": "…",
  "source": "https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown"
}

Notes on the data:

• publishedAt on listed videos is computed from YouTube's relative text ("2 years ago"), so it is approximate.
• Items from a channel's Shorts tab contain the title, view count, thumbnail and URL only.
• Channel fields on items from channel tabs may be empty; the channel item has them.
• If a search, channel or playlist fails, the dataset gets an item with type: "error" or an error field explaining why.

Pricing

Pay per event. Current prices:

Event	Price	Per 1,000
video-listed (a video from search, channel or playlist)	$0.0015	$1.50
item-listed (a channel or playlist item, including the channel profile item)	$0.0015	$1.50
video-detail (a video with full details)	$0.003	$3
apify-actor-start (once per run)	$0.00005

Worked example: one channel with 500 videos in the Videos tab, listed without details, is 1 channel item plus 500 listed videos: 501 x $0.0015 + $0.00005 = $0.75 (rounded). The same channel with fetchDetailsForListedVideos on is 500 detailed videos plus the channel item: 500 x $0.003 + $0.0015 + $0.00005 = $1.50 (rounded). With details on, a video is charged only the detailed price.

In monitor mode only new videos and the first run's channel item are charged. A daily run on one channel that finds 3 new videos costs 3 x $0.0015 + $0.00005 = $0.00455; a run with nothing new costs only the $0.00005 start event.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube Data API key? No. The actor reads YouTube's public pages, so there is no key and no daily quota.

How many search results can I get per query? Usually several hundred with maxResultsPerQuery at 0. For broad terms, combine searchUploadDate and searchSort or run several related queries.

What is the difference between listed and detailed videos? Listed items come from search, channel or playlist pages with an approximate date. Details add the exact date, likes and the other fields above, at the detailed price.

Do I need proxies? Usually not. If YouTube starts returning errors and you have not set a proxy, the actor retries through Apify residential proxy.

What can it not do? It does not download video files, and it does not return transcripts or comments (use the sister actors below). Private and members-only videos are out of reach.

How do I export or automate it? Download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, call the actor through the Apify API or SDKs, schedule runs, or connect it to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier or n8n.

Use it from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor (Apify MCP server)

The actor can be called as a tool by any AI assistant that speaks the Model Context Protocol. Add the Apify MCP server to your client with this URL, which loads only this actor as a tool:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=pulsedata/youtube-scraper

You sign in to Apify on first connection, then ask in plain language, for example "find the 50 most viewed videos about home espresso uploaded this month". Billing is the same as a normal run.

Paying from an AI agent without an Apify account (x402 and Skyfire)

An agent can buy a prepaid, spend-capped Apify token at Apify AGI, paid in USDC through x402 or from a Skyfire wallet, and use it for both the API and the MCP server. This actor runs with limited permissions, so it works with these tokens. The smallest token is $1, tokens expire 14 days after purchase, and Apify marks agentic payments as experimental.

Example pages

• Find this week's most viewed videos on a topic
• Find YouTube channels in a niche
• Get new uploads of a YouTube channel

Related actors

• YouTube Channel Videos Scraper: a channel-only version of this actor with a shorter input form.
• YouTube Transcript Scraper: transcripts and subtitles for the video URLs this actor returns.
• YouTube Comments Scraper: comments and replies for the same videos.
• Google Ads Transparency Center Scraper: see a brand's YouTube video ads alongside its organic uploads.