YouTube Search Scraper - Videos, Channels & Views

Search public YouTube videos by keyword and export structured titles, watch URLs, video IDs, channels, channel handles, displayed views, publication age, duration, thumbnail URLs, description snippets, and result badges. Views, duration, and publish age are also parsed into ready-to-use numbers and an ISO timestamp. Run one query or a bounded batch without a YouTube Data API key.

What data can I extract?

• Video title, ID, and canonical watch URL
• Channel name, channel URL, and channel @handle
• Channel badge text such as Verified or Official Artist Channel
• Displayed view count and relative publication age, plus parsed view_count (number) and published_at (ISO 8601)
• Video duration and thumbnail URL, plus parsed length_seconds (number)
• Description snippet shown under the result
• Result badges such as CC, 4K, LIVE, and New

Input example

{
  "search_query": "small business marketing",
  "max_items": 25
}

Use search_queries for up to 25 keyword searches. max_items is a hard run-wide result ceiling.

Output example

{
  "title": "Small Business Marketing Strategy",
  "video_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "channel_name": "Example Channel",
  "channel_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@example",
  "views": "1.2M views",
  "view_count": 1200000,
  "published": "2 years ago",
  "published_at": "2024-09-13T12:00:00Z",
  "duration": "12:34",
  "length_seconds": 754,
  "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/hqdefault.jpg",
  "description": "A practical walkthrough of the marketing channels that actually move small business revenue ...",
  "channel_handle": "@example",
  "channel_verified": "Verified",
  "badges": "CC, 4K"
}

Common use cases

• Discover videos and channels for a keyword
• Research content, competitors, creators, and search-result coverage
• Build seed lists for media monitoring or later enrichment
• Give an AI agent current public YouTube search context

Use with AI agents and MCP

Example agent intent:

Find 50 public YouTube videos about warehouse automation and return title, URL, channel, views, publication age, and duration.

{
  "search_query": "warehouse automation",
  "max_items": 50
}

The strict input and dataset schemas let Apify MCP clients inspect the callable contract before execution.

Pricing and cost control

Output is billed per result at $0.001 per result (about $1.00 per 1,000 results), plus a $0.001 Actor-start charge billed once per gigabyte of memory at run start. Use max_items to cap both output volume and charges. The price shown on the Apify Store listing is authoritative.

Reliability

The Actor scrolls YouTube search results, deduplicates by video ID, validates required fields, and is enrolled in the fleet's selector monitoring and staged self-healing process.

Limitations and responsible use

• Extracts public search-result metadata, not transcripts or comments.
• views, published, and duration stay as the display strings YouTube showed at scrape time. view_count, published_at, and length_seconds are best-effort parses of those same strings (published_at estimates a moment from a relative age such as "3 days ago", so treat it as approximate, not authoritative history) and are null when the source text can't be parsed.
• YouTube can vary results by locale, session, and upstream experiments.
• Use the data in accordance with applicable law and platform terms.

Integrate with No-Code, Webhooks & Spreadsheets

• Google Sheets & Excel: Maintain auto-updating video discovery trackers, creator research sheets, and competitor release monitors.
• Zapier & Make: Send newly uploaded high-performing videos in your niche to Slack, Discord, or marketing Airtables.
• Webhooks: Trigger transcription or summarization workflows automatically whenever a video search run completes.
• Python / Node.js: Search videos and extract metrics directly in Python scripts via apify-client.

Related data tools and workflows

• Twitch Live Streams Scraper (captainhandsome/twitch-live-streams-scraper): Monitor live creator streaming engagement alongside published YouTube video content.
• Google Play Reviews Scraper (captainhandsome/google-play-reviews-scraper): Track consumer app feedback and video influencer sentiment across channels.

FAQ

Does this Actor need a YouTube API key?

No.

Can I search multiple keywords?

Yes. Supply search_queries; duplicates are removed and max_items limits total output.

Does it download videos or audio?

No. It returns public search metadata and links only.

See CHANGELOG.md for maintained schema changes.