YouTube Channel Scraper (videos, shorts, live)

What is YouTube Channel Scraper?

YouTube Channel Scraper reads a public YouTube channel's Videos, Shorts or Live tab and returns one row per video with title, view count, publish time, duration and thumbnail. You do not need your own YouTube Data API key or a browser. Give it a channel ID, an @handle, or a channel URL; export the results or use Apify's schedules, webhooks and API to repeat the workflow. YouTube can still block requests or change its page data, and Apify usage limits apply.

Pricing: YouTube Channel Scraper (videos, shorts, live) costs $0.50 per 1,000 results (pay per result, no subscription; Apify's free plan credit covers small runs).

The Free-plan rate was checked against this Actor's live pricing on October 28, 2026. Other Apify plans have lower per-row rates; see Pricing below and the live pricing tab before running.

Result quality and billing

Only videos with a valid video ID, matching YouTube URL and non-empty title enter the default dataset. Duplicate video IDs are removed within a process attempt. Errors and empty/missing-tab notices are saved as unique DIAGNOSTIC-* records in the default key-value store; OUTPUT summarizes confirmed results, partial failures and diagnostics. They do not generate the default-dataset result event. The Actor start fee and applicable platform usage may still apply; check the live Pricing tab for your plan.

If all attempted channels fail to produce usable data, the run fails. A genuine empty/missing tab can complete with zero results. Interrupted pagination keeps valid videos and a separate diagnostic. An explicitly empty channel list never starts a demo. Result budget is reserved before channel work and writes are serialized. Counters and deduplication apply to one process attempt; migration/restart totals are not inferred.

Try one channel with a small result limit

Paste this into the JSON input, set Maximum cost per run, and run it once:

{
    "channels": ["@apify"],
    "tab": "videos",
    "sortBy": "newest",
    "maxVideosPerChannel": 5,
    "maxConcurrency": 1
}

Check that at least one row has a videoId, a video url, a title, and no error. A channel may have fewer than five available videos. Export the checked result before increasing the limit.

Use the channel-inventory starter for a downloadable input. For repeat use, the upload-monitor workflow explains scheduling and deduplicating by videoId. In the default mode, scheduled runs can return the same videos again, so deduplicate downstream; the Actor does not promise only unseen uploads. To get only new uploads, turn on the optional upload monitor below.

Upload monitor: only new uploads (optional)

Off by default. Set onlyNew to true and the Actor keeps a small state record per channel and tab in a named key-value store (stateStoreName, default youtube-channel-scraper-state). The record holds the last 500 video IDs it saw, newest first. On each run the tab is read newest first and that channel stops at the first video ID it already knows, without requesting more pages. Only the new videos are written to the dataset and charged; an unchanged channel returns zero rows and the run still succeeds.

• First run without state: with baselineOnly: false (default) the channel is scraped normally up to maxVideosPerChannel and the written videos become the state. With baselineOnly: true the current videos are recorded as seen without writing or charging any rows, so the next run returns only uploads published after the baseline.
• State is saved only after a confirmed dataset write. If the write fails, the state stays as it was; if the state cannot be saved, the run fails so you know the next run may repeat those videos.
• onlyNew needs newest-first order. sortBy: "popular" together with onlyNew is rejected as an input error before any channel request, and no result is charged.
• At most maxVideosPerChannel new videos are returned per channel and run. If more were uploaded since the last run, or pagination fails before reaching a known video, the older uploads in that gap are skipped (pagination failures leave a DIAGNOSTIC-* record). Use one stateStoreName per separate monitor; pricing and result events are unchanged.

Example scheduled input, e.g. an Apify schedule with cron 0 */6 * * * (every 6 hours):

{
    "channels": ["@apify", "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA"],
    "tab": "videos",
    "sortBy": "newest",
    "maxVideosPerChannel": 30,
    "onlyNew": true,
    "baselineOnly": true,
    "stateStoreName": "my-upload-monitor"
}

What data does YouTube Channel Scraper extract?

YouTube Channel Scraper extracts 20 fields per video:

Field	Type	Description
channelId, channelName, channelUrl	string	The channel that owns the video
subscriberCountText, subscriberCount	string, number	Subscriber count as shown ("517M subscribers") and parsed
videoId, url, title, type	string	Video ID, watch/shorts URL, title, and video/short/stream
viewCountText, viewCount	string, number	View count as shown ("85M views") and parsed
publishedTimeText, publishedAtApprox	string	Relative publish time ("7 days ago") and an approximate ISO 8601 date
durationText, durationSeconds	string, number	Duration badge ("23:28") and parsed seconds
thumbnailUrl	string	Largest available thumbnail image
descriptionSnippet	string	Short description preview, when the tab includes one
isLive	boolean	Whether the video/stream is broadcasting live right now
query, error, scrapedAt	string	Input value, null error on accepted video rows, scrape timestamp

How to use YouTube Channel Scraper

1. Paste channels into Channels: an @handle, a channel ID (UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA), or a full URL all work.
2. Pick a Tab — Videos, Shorts, or Live (past and current livestreams).
3. Optionally set Sort by to popular to get the channel's highest-viewed videos first.
4. Set Max videos per channel and click Start, then export as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.

Example input

{
    "channels": ["@MrBeast", "@mkbhd"],
    "tab": "videos",
    "sortBy": "newest",
    "maxVideosPerChannel": 100,
    "maxConcurrency": 3
}

Example output

{
    "channelId": "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
    "channelName": "MrBeast",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
    "subscriberCountText": "517M subscribers",
    "subscriberCount": 517000000,
    "videoId": "gTKS8SAwUzE",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTKS8SAwUzE",
    "title": "I Survived The Most Extreme Places On Earth",
    "type": "video",
    "viewCountText": "85M views",
    "viewCount": 85000000,
    "publishedTimeText": "7 days ago",
    "publishedAtApprox": "2026-09-06T00:00:00.000Z",
    "durationText": "23:28",
    "durationSeconds": 1408,
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gTKS8SAwUzE/hq720_custom_2.jpg",
    "isLive": false,
    "query": "@MrBeast",
    "error": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-13T01:00:00.000Z"
}

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
channels	array	["@apify"]	Channel IDs, handles or URLs, one video per row per channel
proxyMode	string	"auto"	auto, always or never, see Proxy requirement below
proxyConfiguration	object	Residential proxy	Which proxy group to use when proxyMode needs one
tab	string	"videos"	videos, shorts or streams (the channel's Live tab)
sortBy	string	"newest"	newest or popular (best-effort; falls back to newest)
maxVideosPerChannel	integer	100	Cap per channel (1-5000)
maxConcurrency	integer	3	Channels scraped in parallel (1-10)
onlyNew	boolean	false	Upload monitor: write and charge only videos not seen before, see Upload monitor
stateStoreName	string	"youtube-channel-scraper-state"	Named key-value store for upload-monitor state
baselineOnly	boolean	false	With onlyNew, record a first-run baseline without writing or charging rows

Proxy requirement

Passing a channel ID (UC...) needs no extra request at all. Passing a handle (@apify) or a legacy /c///user/ URL costs one extra request to read that channel's page and pull its UC... ID out of the HTML — and that specific request can get YouTube's "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" page (or Google's "unusual traffic" captcha wall) when it comes from an Apify platform (datacenter) IP. The Proxy mode input controls the response: Auto (default) tries that request directly first — $0 proxy cost — and only switches to Apify Proxy (see Proxy configuration) for the rest of the run if it gets blocked; Always skips straight to the proxy; Never always stays direct. The channel's /browse data itself is never proxied (no report of it being blocked).

Pricing

YouTube Channel Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing: $0.0005 per video row on the Free plan, or $0.50 per 1,000 video rows. The rate is $0.0004 on Bronze, $0.00035 on Silver, and $0.0003 on Gold, Platinum and Diamond. There is also an actor-start event priced at $0.00005 per event; Apify applies one event per GB of Actor memory, with a minimum of one. These rates were checked on October 28, 2026; the live pricing tab is authoritative. Set Maximum cost per run before starting.

Handle resolution can use Apify Proxy when direct requests are blocked (see Proxy requirement above). Check the live pricing tab for what platform usage is included. Post-run dataset access and storage can incur standard Apify charges; see Apify's pricing-model explanation. Proxy use does not guarantee that YouTube will accept every request.

YouTube Channel Scraper vs. the YouTube Data API

The official YouTube Data API is a good alternative if you can maintain an API integration. You can get a channel's uploads playlist and page through it with playlistItems.list, which costs one quota unit per call and returns up to 50 items. You do not need a search request for every upload. Choose this Actor when you want the public Videos, Shorts or Live-tab workflow, normalized output and Apify scheduling/export without maintaining that integration. It is not a guarantee against YouTube blocking or future changes.

Using YouTube Channel Scraper with AI agents and MCP

YouTube Channel Scraper is pay-per-event with limited permissions — the two requirements for an Actor to be callable through the Apify MCP server at mcp.apify.com. An agent passes channels and tab and gets back one structured row per video, ready for a content-monitoring or competitor-research step. The same run works from n8n, Make, Zapier and LangChain through Apify's integrations.

Need bulk volume or a custom scraper?

Need a fixed monthly price, a large recurring run, extra output fields, or a scraper for a site this Actor does not cover? Open an issue on this Actor's Issues tab and include: the target site or URL pattern, the expected volume per run and how often you run it, and the output fields you need. We reply there.

FAQ

Why is descriptionSnippet always null? YouTube's current channel-grid response (the "lockup" card format) does not send a description preview for grid items, unlike the older per-video card. It is kept as a field for forward compatibility if YouTube adds it back.

How is publishedAtApprox calculated? YouTube only ever sends a relative label ("7 days ago"), never an absolute date, on this page. The Actor subtracts that duration from the scrape time — treat it as approximate, not exact.

What happens if a channel has no Shorts or Live tab? That channel returns a single row with error explaining the tab was not found, instead of failing the whole run.

Is this legal to run? Yes. The Actor reads the same public channel pages a logged-out visitor's browser loads, and does not require or bypass any login.

Can I export to CSV or Excel? Yes, from the Output tab or the API, with a ready-made Overview view.

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Support and feedback

Found a channel layout this Actor doesn't handle, or a parsing bug? Open an issue on the Issues tab.