YouTube Scraper – Videos, Shorts, Channels & Search

YouTube Scraper — complete video data from search, channels, playlists, Shorts and hashtags

Get YouTube videos, Shorts and live streams with every field filled in on every row: exact publish date and time, duration, views, likes, exact comment count, tags, category, hashtags, description and channel data (name, handle, subscribers, verified). From search terms with all YouTube filters, channels (Videos, Shorts, Live tabs), playlists, hashtag pages, search result links and single videos. Optionally with comments.

Why this Actor

• Complete rows, not just what the list shows. A YouTube search or channel page only shows title, views and "3 weeks ago". This Actor opens every video, so each row from a search, channel or playlist has the exact publish time, likes, comment count, tags and category too. In our tests 1,014 videos out of 1,018 (99.6%) from 25 searches, 5 channels and 3 playlists came back with full details.
• Checked against the real pages. We compared 30 videos field by field with their YouTube pages: title, publish date and time, duration, category, tags, views, likes, channel and subscribers matched 30 out of 30.
• Exact comment count. Where YouTube shows a rounded "2.4K comments", you get the exact number (for example 2437).
• Newest first and Most viewed that really work. YouTube no longer sorts search results by upload date and sorts by views only roughly. With these options the Actor reads the whole result list of the search (up to 1,000 videos) and sorts it itself: in our tests 0 videos out of order in the top 20.
• Big channels and playlists. A channel of 1,000 videos came back complete, in date order, without duplicates. Playlists go past the first 100 videos.
• Only new videos. publishedAfter (2026-09-01 or 7 days) keeps only recent videos; on channels sorted newest first the Actor stops as soon as it reaches older videos. Older videos are not charged.
• Clear errors, never charged. Wrong links, deleted videos, private playlists and channels that do not exist get a status row with the reason, free.

Use cases

• Influencer and creator research: every video of a channel with views, likes, comments and engagement over time.
• Brand and competitor monitoring: the newest videos for your keywords every day (Newest first + Upload date: Today).
• Content and SEO research: titles, tags, categories and hashtags of the top videos for a topic, in any country and language.
• Trend analysis: Shorts and hashtag pages, with exact numbers.
• Comment analysis and AI: comments with author, likes, replies, pinned and "hearted by creator", ready for sentiment analysis or LLM pipelines.

Input

Field	Description
Search terms	One search per line, as you would type it on YouTube.
YouTube URLs	Videos, Shorts, channels (/@handle, /channel/UC…, /c/…, /user/…, optionally ending in /videos, /shorts, /streams), playlists, search result pages (their filters are kept) and hashtag pages (/hashtag/cooking).
Max videos per search or URL	Default 20. For channels, per tab.
Full details for every video	On by default: exact publish time, duration, tags and category on every row. Off: faster and cheaper for us, views, likes, comment count, date, description and channel data are still included.
Search filters	Sort (Relevance, Newest first, Most viewed), upload date (last hour, today, this week, this month, this year), type (videos, Shorts, live now), duration (under 4, 4-20, over 20 minutes), features (HD, 4K, subtitles, Creative Commons, live, 360°, HDR, VR180, 3D, location, purchased).
Channel tabs, channel order	Videos, Shorts, Live; newest first, most popular or oldest first.
Only videos published after	A date or an age (7 days, 2 weeks, 3 months).
Comments per video	0 = no comments. Top comments or newest first.
Country, language	Country for ranking and availability (US, GB, DE, IN…), language of the search (en, de, es…).

Example input:

{
  "searchQueries": ["iphone 17 review"],
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium" },
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab" }
  ],
  "maxResults": 50,
  "sortBy": "date",
  "uploadDate": "week",
  "publishedAfter": "7 days",
  "maxComments": 0
}

Output

One row per video, Short or live stream. Real output (description and lists shortened here):

{
  "type": "video",
  "id": "JsBZOcqZerk",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsBZOcqZerk",
  "title": "The Insane Real Engineering of the Nazi Enigma Machine",
  "description": "How was the \"unbreakable\" enigma cracked? ...",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-21T17:49:57.000Z",
  "publishedDate": "2026-09-21",
  "publishedTimeText": "7 days ago",
  "durationSeconds": 2861,
  "duration": "47:41",
  "viewCount": 12452633,
  "likeCount": 106743,
  "commentCount": 5839,
  "commentsTurnedOff": false,
  "hashtags": [],
  "tags": ["veritasium", "science", "physics", "Veritasium"],
  "category": "Education",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JsBZOcqZerk/hqdefault.jpg",
  "isLive": false,
  "isUpcoming": false,
  "isFamilySafe": true,
  "isUnlisted": false,
  "isMembersOnly": false,
  "channelId": "UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA",
  "channelName": "Veritasium",
  "channelHandle": "@veritasium",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium",
  "channelSubscribers": 21300000,
  "channelVerified": true,
  "collaborators": null,
  "channelDescription": "An element of truth - videos about science, education, and anything else we find...",
  "channelCountry": "United States",
  "channelJoinedDate": "2010-07-21",
  "channelTotalViews": 4611185593,
  "channelTotalVideos": 536,
  "channelLinks": [{ "title": "Buy SNATOMS", "url": "https://snatoms.com/" }],
  "source": "channel",
  "input": "https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium",
  "position": 1,
  "detailsComplete": true,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-29T10:49:18.385Z"
}

• type: video, short or stream (live now, upcoming or past live).
• Live streams also have liveViewers (while live), liveStartedAt, liveEndedAt.
• Channel fields channelDescription, channelCountry, channelJoinedDate, channelTotalViews, channelTotalVideos, channelLinks are added when the source is a channel.
• collaborators: for videos made by several channels, all of them with id, name, handle and subscribers (the first one is the main channel).
• With comments on, comments holds text, author, authorChannelId, authorIsChannelOwner, authorIsVerified, publishedTimeText, likeCount, replyCount, isPinned, isHearted.
• Status rows (status: invalid_input, not_found, unavailable, no_results, error) explain what could not be read, and are not charged.

Pricing

Pay per result: $2.50 per 1,000 videos (lower on higher Apify plans) and $1.20 per 1,000 comments. Status rows and videos filtered out by publishedAfter are free. You can set a maximum cost per run: the Actor stops exactly at your limit, and every video is charged together with its comments, so you get complete rows (only the last video may have fewer comments).

Good to know

• Numbers YouTube does not make public stay empty (null): likes hidden by the creator (and on videos made for kids), subscribers hidden by the channel, views of members-only videos, comments turned off. Subscribers are rounded as YouTube shows them (21.3M → 21300000).
• A search gives what YouTube lists: usually 300-600 videos per search. For more, use several related search terms or the upload date filter.
• Speed: about 1,000 videos in 7-12 minutes with full details, 500 videos in about 35 seconds without.
• Live streams have no duration while live; members-only videos have no public view count.

FAQ

Can I get the transcript or subtitles? Use our YouTube Transcript Scraper, which gives the full transcript with timestamps in any language.

Can I scrape only Shorts? Yes: in a search choose type "Shorts only", or give a channel URL ending in /shorts, or choose the Shorts tab.

Does it need my YouTube account or cookies? No. It reads only public data.