YouTube Video Comments Scraper

🚀 Fast and reliable scraper for extracting YouTube comments and optional replies

Get structured YouTube comment data for audience research, sentiment analysis, content strategy, competitive monitoring, and AI workflows.

💰 Simple Pay-per-Use Pricing

No monthly fees • No setup costs • Pay only for comments and replies fetched

What You Get	Cost	Example
Comments	$0.001 per comment	1,000 comments = $1.00
Replies	$0.001 per reply	500 replies = $0.50
Video Info in Logs	Included	Used for progress and coverage reporting, not saved as a dataset item

📊 What Data You'll Get

Every dataset item is an actual YouTube comment or reply. Video metadata is shown in the run logs for context, but it is not added to the result dataset.

💬 Comment Data

For each comment, you'll receive:

• Comment ID
• Author name
• Author thumbnail
• Comment text
• Like count
• Reply count

↩️ Reply Data (Optional)

When you enable replies, reply records include:

• Reply comment ID
• Parent comment ID
• Reply author, text, thumbnail, and like count
• Reply marker so replies are easy to separate from top-level comments

🚀 How to Use

Step 1: Add a YouTube Video

Paste any supported YouTube video URL or video ID:

• Standard videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• Short links: https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID
• Shorts: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID
• Live videos: https://www.youtube.com/live/VIDEO_ID
• Raw 11-character video IDs

Step 2: Choose What to Fetch

Option A: Comments ⚡ Recommended for most users

• Best for: Research, sentiment analysis, audience insights
• Speed: Fastest full-data mode
• Cost: $0.001 per comment
• Use cases: Comment exports, topic mining, engagement analysis

Option B: Comments + Replies 📋 Complete conversation data

• Best for: Conversation analysis and community research
• Speed: Slower because reply threads require extra requests
• Cost: $0.001 per comment or reply
• Use cases: Thread analysis, creator-audience interaction, support monitoring

Option C: Video Check Only 🎥 Logs only

• Best for: Quick video checks before scraping comments
• Speed: Fastest mode
• Cost: No comment-result events and no dataset records
• Use cases: Video lookup, metadata validation, pre-scrape planning

Step 3: Run and Download

• Real-time progress updates while comments are fetched
• Automatic retry handling for temporary network or YouTube errors
• Download results from the Apify dataset in JSON, CSV, Excel, or other supported formats

📈 Use Cases

🧠 Audience Research

• Sentiment Analysis: Analyze how viewers react to a video
• Topic Discovery: Find repeated questions, requests, complaints, and praise
• Community Insights: Understand what viewers care about most

📣 Content Strategy

• Video Feedback: Extract suggestions and reactions from viewers
• Creator Research: Compare audience response across videos or channels
• Trend Mining: Identify emerging topics in comment sections

🏢 Business Intelligence

• Competitor Monitoring: Track reactions to competitor launches and campaigns
• Brand Monitoring: Find customer feedback in YouTube discussions
• Product Research: Collect feature requests and pain points from viewers

🤖 AI and Data Pipelines

• Training Datasets: Build structured comment datasets
• RAG Inputs: Feed comments into knowledge bases or analysis workflows
• Automations: Connect Apify datasets to Make, n8n, Zapier, or custom scripts

📋 Sample Output

Comment Record

{
  "commentId": "Ugxyz123",
  "author": "Jane Viewer",
  "authorThumbnail": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/...",
  "text": "This explanation was exactly what I needed.",
  "likeCount": 128,
  "replyCount": 4
}

Reply Record

{
  "commentId": "Ugyreply456",
  "author": "Another Viewer",
  "authorThumbnail": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/...",
  "text": "Same here, this helped a lot.",
  "likeCount": 12,
  "replyCount": 0,
  "parentCommentId": "Ugxyz123",
  "isReply": true
}

⚡ Performance

• Simple setup: Paste a YouTube video URL and run
• Large-video support: Designed for videos with busy comment sections
• Duplicate prevention: Keeps repeated comments out of the dataset
• Progress recovery: Helps preserve results during longer runs
• Reliable output: Saves fetched records as the run progresses
• Partial results retained: Keeps data already collected if a later step fails

🎯 Pricing Examples

Small Projects

• 100 comments: $0.10
• Perfect for: Testing, quick checks, small videos

Medium Projects

• 1,000 comments: $1.00
• Perfect for: Audience research and sentiment analysis

Large Projects

• 10,000 comments: $10.00
• Perfect for: Large-scale analysis, data pipelines, AI workflows

Replies are charged the same way as comments because each reply is saved as its own dataset item.

🔧 Configuration

Required Settings

• YouTube Video URL: The video URL or 11-character video ID to scrape

Optional Settings

• Fetch Comments: Enable or disable comment scraping
• Include Replies: Also fetch replies to top-level comments
• Maximum Comments: Stop after a specific number of comments; use 0 to fetch as many as possible
• Enable Checkpointing: Helps preserve progress during longer runs
• Target Coverage: Target percentage of known comments to fetch, from 0.5 to 1.0

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need a YouTube API key?
A: No. Just provide a YouTube video URL or video ID.

Q: Does the dataset include a video metadata record?
A: No. The dataset contains only comment and reply records. Video title, channel, view count, publish date, and reported comment count are shown in the logs.

Q: Can it fetch every comment on very large videos?
A: It tries to fetch as much as possible, but YouTube may limit access on very large videos. You can tune the target coverage setting.

Q: Can I limit the number of comments?
A: Yes. Set Maximum Comments to any number above 0. Leave it at 0 to fetch as many comments as possible.

Q: Are replies included automatically?
A: No. Replies are optional because they require extra requests and can slow down scraping.

Q: What happens if YouTube or the network fails during a run?
A: The Actor retries temporary failures and keeps partial results when possible.

Q: What formats can I download?
A: Apify datasets can be downloaded in JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, and HTML formats.

📞 Support

Need help? Contact us at contact@broto.tech

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This Actor is built and maintained by independent developers. Not affiliated with YouTube or Google.