🎥 YouTube Comments Scraper

Quickly extract structured comment data from one or more YouTube videos — including comment text, author info, timestamps, votes, and raw fields.

Built to run as an Apify actor. This README shows a summary, inputs, outputs, examples, troubleshooting tips and proxy recommendations. 🔧

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✨ Summary

This actor scrapes comments from YouTube video URLs and returns structured JSON objects per video, including:

• 💬 Comments (text, id, author, replies, likes/votes, timestamps)
• 👤 Author info (author name, author id, author url, avatar if available)
• 🧾 Video metadata (video id, video url, title, best-effort commentsCount)
• 📦 Raw payload — the original raw comment object is preserved for every comment so you don’t lose any fields.

Key points:

• Input: one or more YouTube video URLs (startUrls).
• Optional: maxComments to limit how many comments per video are scraped.
• Optional: getAllComments to ignore maxComments and fetch all available comments.
• Optional: sortBy — top (highest votes first) or newest (most recent first).

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🚀 Highlights

• ⚡ Fast, structured output — one JSON object per video run.
• 🧩 Preserves full raw comment object for custom fields.
• 🎯 Exact maxComments support (when getAllComments is false) and getAllComments toggle.
• 🌐 Proxy-aware (Apify Proxy recommended for stability) — use RESIDENTIAL for best results.
• 🔁 Supports sorting by top or newest.

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🛠️ Example Input

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iSL6sAnqiI",
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT4HcYAeV5U"
  ],
  "maxComments": 100,
  "getAllComments": false,
  "sortBy": "top",
}

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📤 Output

For every video the actor writes results both to the Apify dataset and to container files:

• output_<videoId>.json — full JSON object for the video (including comments array).
• comments_<videoId>.jsonl — newline-delimited JSON with one comment per line (good for streaming).
• Apify dataset entry for each video — downloadable from the Apify Console. ☁️

Example output (one video object)

{
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT4HcYAeV5U",
  "videoId": "wT4HcYAeV5U",
  "title": "YouTube",
  "commentsCount": null,
  "comments": [
  {
    "cid": "Ugwih9FXnfMBhU7Puq14AaABAg",
    "type": "comment",
    "publishedTimeText": "2 weeks ago",
    "publishedTimeTs": 1758540810.930094,
    "comment": "সব মানুষ মনে হয় খাবার সময় গোপাল ভার দেখে 🙂",
    "author": "@pg.riyaj.3",
    "replyCount": 51,
    "voteCount": 215,
    "videoId": "k_dYs8ovmnk",
    "pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dYs8ovmnk"
  },
  {
    "cid": "UgyY2cgaCo9xXJVBpJV4AaABAg",
    "type": "comment",
    "publishedTimeText": "2 weeks ago",
    "publishedTimeTs": 1758540806.842928,
    "comment": "কে কে 12 থেকে 35 বছরের আছো ❤❤",
    "author": "@SoniyaSoniya-e7q",
    "replyCount": 70,
    "voteCount": 104,
    "videoId": "k_dYs8ovmnk",
    "pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dYs8ovmnk"
  },
  {
    "cid": "UgyxgyZT6ZGWUnTSwQt4AaABAg",
    "type": "comment",
    "publishedTimeText": "2 weeks ago",
    "publishedTimeTs": 1758540809.373403,
    "comment": "বাংলাদেশ থেকে কেউ আছেন নাকি আজ..😊😊",
    "author": "@SAMIYAAKTER1",
    "replyCount": 35,
    "voteCount": 44,
    "videoId": "k_dYs8ovmnk",
    "pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dYs8ovmnk"
  },
  {
    "cid": "UgwqTDVlG00_21d_93F4AaABAg",
    "type": "comment",
    "publishedTimeText": "11 days ago",
    "publishedTimeTs": 1758800003.511669,
    "comment": "লা ইলাহা ইল্লাল্লাহু মুহাম্মাদুর রাসুলুল্লাহ সা.",
    "author": "@NabilHasan2010",
    "replyCount": 5,
    "voteCount": 27,
    "videoId": "k_dYs8ovmnk",
    "pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dYs8ovmnk"
  },
  {
    "cid": "Ugwih9FXnfMBhU7Puq14AaABAg.AN5M7ZphVN-AN5OkYWivB4",
    "type": "comment",
    "publishedTimeText": "2 weeks ago",
    "publishedTimeTs": 1758540811.106132,
    "comment": "না সবাইকে কি আপনার মত অভদ্র ভাবেন",
    "author": "@Sumaiyaislamasif",
    "replyCount": 0,
    "voteCount": 22,
    "videoId": "k_dYs8ovmnk",
    "pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dYs8ovmnk"
  },
  {
    "cid": "UgwAoDMlvcljdsJsyqB4AaABAg",
    "type": "comment",
    "publishedTimeText": "11 days ago",
    "publishedTimeTs": 1758800003.512453,
    "comment": "কে কে খাবার সময় গোপাল ভার দেখো",
    "author": "@MrsHabibaakther",
    "replyCount": 10,
    "voteCount": 21,
    "videoId": "k_dYs8ovmnk",
    "pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dYs8ovmnk"
  },
  {
    "cid": "Ugycz2giiskNOWCIRHx4AaABAg",
    "type": "comment",
    "publishedTimeText": "2 weeks ago",
    "publishedTimeTs": 1758540806.850238,
    "comment": "আমার মতো খেতে খেতে গোপাল ভাঁড় কে কে দেখছো???",
    "author": "@ask7724",
    "replyCount": 3,
    "voteCount": 21,
    "videoId": "k_dYs8ovmnk",
    "pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dYs8ovmnk"
  },
  {
    "cid": "UgxeZDYvH4bS1Skx2Xt4AaABAg",
    "type": "comment",
    "publishedTimeText": "2 weeks ago",
    "publishedTimeTs": 1758540808.419253,
    "comment": "আমি সকালে উঠে দেখি আর ভাত খাওয়ার সময় দেখি❤❤❤",
    "author": "@Ridoyray96",
    "replyCount": 1,
    "voteCount": 19,
    "videoId": "k_dYs8ovmnk",
    "pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dYs8ovmnk"
  },
  {
    "cid": "UgzWnhCZ19Z6fLWnm2B4AaABAg",
    "type": "comment",
    "publishedTimeText": "2 weeks ago",
    "publishedTimeTs": 1758540808.424829,
    "comment": "Dinner with gopal bhar ❤❤",
    "author": "@SukdebGoswami-d7x",
    "replyCount": 0,
    "voteCount": 19,
    "videoId": "k_dYs8ovmnk",
    "pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dYs8ovmnk"
  },
  {
    "cid": "UgyWpeRYmNHJS6O35AF4AaABAg",
    "type": "comment",
    "publishedTimeText": "2 weeks ago",
    "publishedTimeTs": 1758540810.933044,
    "comment": "খাচ্ছি আর দেখছি",
    "author": "@ČŔĂŹŶĹŐVĔŔ-x1t",
    "replyCount": 3,
    "voteCount": 18,
    "videoId": "k_dYs8ovmnk",
    "pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dYs8ovmnk"
  },
  ]
  "scrapedCount": 1
}

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📑 Typical fields

Field	Description
videoUrl	Input video URL
videoId	YouTube video ID
title	Best-effort page title (if available)
commentsCount	Best-effort comment count (may be null)
comments	Array of comment objects
comments[].cid	Comment unique id
comments[].comment	Comment text
comments[].author	Author display name
comments[].authorId	Author channel id (if available)
comments[].authorUrl	Author channel URL (if available)
comments[].authorThumbnail	Author avatar URL (if available)
comments[].publishedTimeText	Human readable time (e.g. "2 days ago")
comments[].publishedTimeTs	Parsed timestamp (when parseable)
comments[].replyCount	Number of replies
comments[].voteCount	Likes / votes count (if available)
comments[].isHearted	Whether channel owner hearted the comment
comments[].isEdited	Whether the commenter edited the comment
comments[].raw	Full raw object returned by underlying parser

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🧩 Troubleshooting

Issue	Possible Cause	Fix / Tip
Empty dataset	Wrong video URL or comments disabled	Verify URLs and check video has comments; try another video.
Fewer comments than expected	maxComments limit or generator yielded fewer	Set getAllComments=true or increase maxComments
commentsCount is null	Not present in page HTML	Use comments[].raw to inspect raw payload for count
Partial metadata	Fields hidden or loaded dynamically	Check raw field; consider retries with proxy
Rate limiting / 429 errors	Too many requests without proxy	Use Apify Proxy RESIDENTIAL or reduce concurrency

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