YouTube Channel Profile Scraper (Apify Actor)

Fast YouTube channel scraper for public channel profile data from URLs, handles, or display names. No YouTube Data API and no API key required.

Short store tagline: Scrape YouTube channel profile and About-page data from URLs, handles, or channel names.

Features

• Input: channel URLs (@handle, /channel/UC…, /c/…, /user/…) and/or channel names (YouTube search, best match)
• Output: channel ID, title, handle, description, subscriber/video/view counts (as shown on YouTube), thumbnails, verified flag, optional About fields
• Metadata only — does not crawl video lists
• Fast direct fetch with Playwright fallback
• Apify Proxy defaults to the RESIDENTIAL group, but can be changed in input

Input

Field	Type	Description
channels	string[]	Full channel URLs, @handles, UC... IDs, or display names

Built-in defaults:

• About page loading is enabled.
• Name search resolves the best single match.
• Concurrency is kept conservative for stable runs.
• Apify Proxy uses the RESIDENTIAL group by default.

Example input

{
  "channels": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast",
    "@mkbhd",
    "MKBHD"
  ]
}

Output (dataset)

Each channel is one JSON object, for example:

{
  "channelId": "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
  "title": "MrBeast",
  "handle": "MrBeast",
  "description": "…",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast",
  "customUrl": "@MrBeast",
  "subscriberCountText": "450M subscribers",
  "videoCountText": "900 videos",
  "viewCountText": null,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://…",
  "bannerUrl": "https://…",
  "isVerified": true,
  "country": null,
  "joinedDateText": null,
  "links": [],
  "matchedBy": "url",
  "searchQuery": null,
  "searchRank": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-02T12:00:00.000Z"
}

When matching by name: matchedBy is "name_search", searchQuery and searchRank are set.

Local development

npm install
npx playwright install chromium
npm test
apify run

Edit storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json for local input.

Deploy to Apify

npm install -g apify-cli
apify login
apify push

Then in Apify Console → Publication → fill icon, description, categories → Publish to Store.

Limits

• Scraping depends on YouTube page structure; occasional maintenance may be needed.
• Channel names are not unique — use URLs when you need an exact channel.
• Subscriber counts may be hidden or rounded by YouTube.
• Respect YouTube Terms of Service; use reasonable concurrency.

Pricing note

Runs consume Apify platform resources (compute + proxy). There is no Google API quota cost.