YouTube Comments Scraper — real numbers, no API key

Every comment from any YouTube video. Text, author, like and reply counts, and relative post time. No API key, no daily quota, no 100-comment cap.

What it does

• Scrape YouTube comments to JSON or CSV
• Export all comments from a YouTube video
• Get YouTube comment sentiment data in bulk
• Download YouTube comments without an API key
• Analyse audience feedback across many videos

Pass many videos in one run. Every comment is tagged with its source video.

Counts are numbers, not "309K"

YouTube returns engagement as abbreviated strings — 309K, 1.2M, 963. Most scrapers hand those straight through, so you have to parse them yourself before you can sort or sum anything.

This one returns integers: 309000, 1200000, 963. Sortable and summable the moment you get them.

Honest failure reporting

reason	Meaning	Charged
— (ok: true)	Comments returned	Yes
comments-disabled	Video fine, comments off or none posted	No
video-unavailable	Deleted, private, or region-locked	No
unparseable-input	Not a recognisable video reference	No

Feeding a large list? Dead videos and comment-less ones cost you nothing.

Why it keeps working

The extraction route uses the client version the page itself declares rather than a pinned one, and retries on a fresh IP when a residential exit node gets blocked — the two things that most often break YouTube scrapers silently.

Input

Field	Required	Description
videos	yes	Watch URLs, youtu.be links, shorts, or bare IDs
maxCommentsPerVideo	no	Default 100. Your cost ceiling.
maxConcurrency	no	1–20, default 5
proxy	no	Defaults to residential, which YouTube requires

Output

Every row has the same fields whether it succeeded or failed, so you can select columns without branching. Failed rows are never charged.

Field	Type	Description
success	boolean	True when this row carries data. Failed rows are never charged.
videoId	string	YouTube's 11-character video identifier.
videoUrl	string	Canonical watch URL for the video.
videoTitle	string	Title of the video the comment is on.
channel	string	Display name of the channel that published the video.
commentId	string	YouTube's identifier for this comment.
text	string	The comment body as posted.
authorHandle	string	The commenter's @handle.
authorChannelId	string	The commenter's channel identifier.
likeCount	integer	Likes on this comment.
replyCount	integer	Replies to this comment. Always 0 for a reply.
publishedText	string	How long ago the comment was posted. YouTube exposes no absolute date here.
isReply	boolean	True when this is a reply rather than a top-level comment.
errorCode	string	Machine-readable failure reason. Null on success.
errorMessage	string	Human-readable explanation of the failure. Null on success.

Example — success

{
  "success": true,
  "videoId": "jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
  "videoTitle": "Me at the zoo",
  "channel": "jawed",
  "commentId": "UgxKREWxIgDrw8w2e_x4AaABAg",
  "text": "This is where it all started. Wild to think how far the platform has come.",
  "authorHandle": "@some_viewer",
  "authorChannelId": "UCq3B8s7Qk2AbCdEfGhIjKl",
  "likeCount": 4127,
  "replyCount": 38,
  "publishedText": "1 year ago",
  "isReply": false,
  "errorCode": null,
  "errorMessage": null
}

Example — failure

A failure carries the same fields, so nothing downstream has to branch.

{
  "success": false,
  "videoId": "s1CFmzZzO4c",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1CFmzZzO4c",
  "videoTitle": "Board meeting recording",
  "channel": "Example Corp",
  "commentId": null,
  "text": null,
  "authorHandle": null,
  "authorChannelId": null,
  "likeCount": null,
  "replyCount": null,
  "publishedText": null,
  "isReply": null,
  "errorCode": "comments-disabled",
  "errorMessage": "The uploader has turned comments off for this video."
}

Error codes

• comments-disabled
• video-unavailable
• blocked
• unparseable-input
• error

A note on dates

YouTube exposes only relative time for comments ("1 year ago"), not a timestamp. The field is named publishedText rather than publishedAt so it is clear it is text, not a parseable date. No scraper can give you an exact date here.

Use it for

• YouTube comments export — every comment on a video, as JSON or CSV
• YouTube video comments in bulk, across many videos per run
• Audience research, sentiment and feedback analysis
• Community management and moderation review
• Creator research and training datasets

Related actors

If you need	Use
The spoken text of a video	YouTube Transcript Scraper
Every transcript on a channel	YouTube Channel Transcript Scraper
Every transcript in a playlist	YouTube Playlist Transcript Scraper
A channel's Shorts	YouTube Shorts Transcript Scraper
Transcripts from a keyword search	YouTube Search to Transcripts

Use it from an AI agent (MCP)

This Actor is callable as a tool through the Apify MCP server, so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code can run it directly.

Add the server to your MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Then ask for what you want in plain language — for example “get the comments on this YouTube video” — and the agent calls cleanfeed/youtube-comments-downloader with the right input. Every output field is described in the dataset schema, so the agent knows what it is getting back before it runs anything.

Call it from code

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")

run = client.actor("cleanfeed/youtube-comments-downloader").call(run_input={
    "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"],
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if item["success"]:
        print(item)

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });

const run = await client.actor('cleanfeed/youtube-comments-downloader').call({
    videos: ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"],
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.filter((i) => i.success));

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cleanfeed~youtube-comments-downloader/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"]}'

Limitations

• A residential proxy is required. YouTube serves playabilityStatus: ERROR to datacenter IP ranges while the identical request succeeds from a home connection — measured 12/12 success on residential against 0/12 on a cloud host with no proxy, and 7/12 through a datacenter proxy. The input defaults to residential; changing it will break most runs. Full method and per-environment figures are published in the reliability benchmark.
• Comments can be disabled. Videos with comments turned off return errorCode: comments-disabled and are never charged.
• Publish dates are relative. YouTube exposes "1 year ago" rather than a timestamp on this surface, so publishedText is a string, not a date.
• Reply threads are included and flagged with isReply, but very deep threads may be truncated by maxCommentsPerVideo.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key?

No. No key, no OAuth, and none of the Data API's daily quota.

Are replies included?

Yes. Replies come back alongside top-level comments and are marked with isReply: true.

Why is the publish date a string like "1 year ago"?

That is what YouTube exposes on this surface. There is no absolute timestamp available, so publishedText reports it verbatim rather than inventing a date.

What if comments are turned off?

The row returns errorCode: comments-disabled and is never charged.

Can I get the transcript instead?

Yes — YouTube Transcript Scraper returns the spoken text of the video.

Notes

Only publicly visible comments are collected. No login, no private data.