YouTube Channel Feed Scraper: New Uploads, no credentials

YouTube Channel Feed Scraper monitors YouTube channels through their own official RSS feeds, video title, ID, publish date, description, thumbnail, view count and channel details, with no credentials and no daily quota.

YouTube publishes a channel and playlist feed that is publisher-sanctioned, and unlike the official Data API it costs you no daily quota. This Actor reads it directly: no browser, no proxies, no login.

Agent skill: SKILL.md

https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/t7YoTxpZEJOWvw4Ug/records/youtube-channel-feed-scraper.md

What you get

Output field	Meaning
channelId, channelTitle	Channel the video belongs to, read per video, so playlists spanning many channels stay correct
videoId, title	Video identifier and title
description	Full description as published in the feed
publishedAt, updatedAt	Upload timestamp and last feed update
videoUrl	Canonical link, /watch?v= or /shorts/ as YouTube reports it
thumbnailUrl	hqdefault thumbnail
viewCount	Views at the moment the feed was read
rating	{ average, count } from the feed's star rating
scrapedAt	Run timestamp

A RUN_SUMMARY record in the key-value store holds per-run counts, the filters used, and any channel that failed.

Common use cases

• Competitor alerts. Run on a schedule and diff on videoId to catch new uploads within minutes.
• Newsletter and digest building. A curated feed of every creator you follow, filtered by keyword.
• Brand monitoring. Watch for uploads mentioning your product in the title.
• Content research. Track upload cadence and early view velocity across a set of channels.
• Quota-free pipelines. Replace YouTube Data API polling that keeps hitting its daily unit cap.

Quick start

Two channels, everything in their feeds:

{
 "channels": ["@mkbhd", "UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw"]
}

Recent uploads matching a keyword, capped:

{
 "channels": ["@LinusTechTips", "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd"],
 "sinceDate": "2026-07-01",
 "keywordFilter": ["review", "unboxing"],
 "maxVideosPerChannel": 5
}

A playlist instead of a channel:

{
 "channels": ["PLj8e95eaxiB9goOAvINIy4Vt3mlWQJxys"]
}

Input

Field	Type	Default	Notes
channels	array	-	Required. Channel IDs (UC…), @handles, playlist IDs (PL…), or any youtube.com URL wrapping one of those. Mixed input is fine.
maxVideosPerChannel	integer	0	Cap saved videos per channel after filtering. 0 = no limit.
sinceDate	string	-	Keep only videos published on or after this date. YYYY-MM-DD or a full ISO timestamp.
keywordFilter	array	[]	Keep only titles containing one of these terms (case-insensitive). Empty = all.

Filters combine with AND: a video must be new enough and match a keyword.

Output example

{
 "channelId": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
 "channelTitle": "Marques Brownlee",
 "videoId": "_xjxwl1zLMc",
 "title": "Framework 13 Pro: The Modular Laptop is Real!",
 "description": "The modular Macbook Pro for Linux users. Color me impressed.\n\nMKBHD Merch: http://shop.MKBHD.com…",
 "publishedAt": "2026-07-27T15:38:21+00:00",
 "updatedAt": "2026-08-06T05:26:11+00:00",
 "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xjxwl1zLMc",
 "thumbnailUrl": "https://i4.ytimg.com/vi/_xjxwl1zLMc/hqdefault.jpg",
 "viewCount": 2983132,
 "rating": { "average": 5, "count": 95523 },
 "scrapedAt": "2026-08-06T11:47:09.151Z"
}

Finding a channel ID

What you have	What to paste
youtube.com/@mkbhd	@mkbhd, resolved automatically
youtube.com/channel/UC…	The whole URL, or just the UC… part
youtube.com/user/LinusTechTips	The whole URL, legacy names are resolved too
A playlist URL with ?list=PL…	The whole URL, or just the PL… part

Handles and vanity names are resolved by reading the canonical channel link off the channel page, once per run and then cached.

API example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/arman-bd~youtube-channel-feed-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
 -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
 -d '{
 "channels": ["@mkbhd"],
 "maxVideosPerChannel": 5
 }'

JavaScript example

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('arman-bd/youtube-channel-feed-scraper').call({
 channels: ['@mkbhd', '@LinusTechTips'],
 sinceDate: '2026-07-01',
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const v of items) console.log(`${v.channelTitle}, ${v.title} (${v.viewCount} views)`);

Notes

• Feeds hold the latest 15 uploads only. That is YouTube's limit, not the Actor's. For continuous coverage, schedule the run more often than the channel publishes.
• Bad channels don't kill the run. An unknown ID returns 404 and is recorded in RUN_SUMMARY.failures; the Actor only errors out if every channel fails.
• The channel ID is read per entry. The feed-level <yt:channelId> drops the UC prefix, a long-standing quirk, so the per-video value and the canonical channel link are used instead. Playlist feeds spanning several creators therefore attribute each video to its real channel.
• Shorts keep their URL. videoUrl is whatever YouTube marks canonical, so a short stays /shorts/… rather than being rewritten.
• Entities are decoded twice. Atom escapes every reserved character and YouTube double-encodes some ampersands, so titles and descriptions come out as real text, not ".
• Transient errors are retried. 429 and 5xx get four attempts with exponential backoff and jitter.
• No dependencies. The feed schema is fixed and tiny, so parsing is done in-house rather than pulling in an XML library.
• Public data only. No authentication, no personal data, no access-control bypass.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. You supply no credentials.

Do I need a proxy? No. Proxy configuration is not required to run this Actor.

Can I get more than 15 videos per channel? Not from the feed. That is its hard limit. Schedule regular runs and accumulate into a dataset instead.

Does it include likes or comments? The feed exposes viewCount and a star rating only. Comment counts are not published there.

Why is viewCount lower than on the video page? The feed's counters refresh on YouTube's own schedule and lag the page slightly.

What happens if a channel is unavailable? It is reported in RUN_SUMMARY.failures and the run continues.

Can I schedule it? Yes, it is designed for scheduled runs. Diff on videoId to alert only on new uploads.

Can I integrate it with something else? Yes, Apify API, client libraries, webhooks, scheduled runs, dataset exports (JSON/CSV/Excel) or MCP. Output is structured JSON.