YouTube Live Cam Scraper - Stream Metadata & Liveness

Scrape any YouTube live stream page for its title, description, live status and auto-tags. Metadata only -- no weather or GPS, because YouTube publishes neither.

What does this Actor return?

Checked against live YouTube streams on 2026-08-21.

• Title and description of the stream
• Live status, read from the player's own live badge
• Auto-tagging (beach, city, mountain, wildlife, traffic, harbour, airport, weather, landmark) from the title and description
• A stable visionSyncId built from the video id, so repeated runs line up

What this Actor does not return

No weather, no GPS coordinates, no timezone. A YouTube page carries no position for the camera, and this Actor does not guess one. Those fields are absent from every record rather than filled with something plausible. The other Actors in the VisionSync suite scrape provider sites that do publish a position, and they return full weather.

No snapshot in most runs. YouTube does not autoplay for an automated browser, so there is usually no decoded frame to capture and snapshot.state is "none". The Actor will not screenshot a player that is showing nothing.

The stream URL is the URL you supplied. YouTube is the stream host, so stream.url echoes the input rather than resolving to a manifest. What the Actor adds is the title, the liveness and the tags.

Why scrape YouTube Live?

YouTube hosts the largest collection of live webcam streams in the world, from city views to nature cams to 24/7 feeds. Scraping YouTube Live enables building live cam aggregators, viewership analytics, content discovery tools, and real-time monitoring dashboards.

How to use

1. Create a free Apify account at apify.com if you don't have one.
2. Open this Actor in the Apify Console and click "Start".
3. Add camera URLs from YouTube Live to the Start URLs field.
4. Click Run and wait for the Actor to finish processing.
5. Download results as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Output tab.

Input example

{
    "startUrls": [
        { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfKfPfyJRdk" },
        { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_6wzBvGZ_8" }
    ]
}

Output example

A record from an actual run, not an illustration:

{
    "visionSyncId": "VS-YTB-J7ZrIDvqlic",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ZrIDvqlic",
    "title": "LIVE Brooks Falls - Katmai National Park, Alaska 2026 | explore.org",
    "description": "**Chat rolls are on 7am - 5 pm PT from Monday through Sunday.Brooks Falls is on solar power and will be live whenever we have enough sun. Brooks Falls in Ala...",
    "stream": {
        "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ZrIDvqlic",
        "type": "youtube",
        "isLive": true,
        "lastVerified": "2026-08-21T18:42:57.181Z",
        "state": "verified"
    },
    "snapshot": {
        "state": "none"
    },
    "enrichment": {
        "location": {}
    },
    "provider": "youtube",
    "timestamp": "2026-08-21T18:42:57.181Z"
}

Filter live cameras only

Set filterLiveOnly: true to skip offline cameras -- useful for scheduled monitoring runs.

{
    "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfKfPfyJRdk" }],
    "filterLiveOnly": true
}

How much will it cost?

This Actor uses Pay-Per-Event pricing: $0.002 per result until 2026-09-04, $0.01 after.

Volume	Until 2026-09-04	From 2026-09-04
100 results	$0.20	$1.00
1,000 results	$2.00	$10.00
10,000 results	$20.00	$100.00

A page that fails to load is reported in the log and skipped rather than billed.

Programmatic access (API)

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("YdZoGOg2n4yM8UMnt").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": [{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfKfPfyJRdk"}]
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["title"], item["stream"]["isLive"], item.get("tags"))

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('YdZoGOg2n4yM8UMnt').call({
    startUrls: [{ url: 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfKfPfyJRdk' }],
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach(item => console.log(item.title, item.stream.isLive, item.tags));

Schedule for monitoring

Build a time series of stream liveness by scheduling this Actor:

{
    "actId": "YdZoGOg2n4yM8UMnt",
    "cronExpression": "0 */6 * * *",
    "input": {
        "startUrls": [{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfKfPfyJRdk"}],
        "filterLiveOnly": true,
        "maxRequestsPerCrawl": 20
    }
}

Tips

• Use filterLiveOnly for scheduled runs to skip offline cameras and save costs.
• Use the tags field to filter results by category (beach, city, mountain, etc.).
• Pass a listing page URL to auto-discover all cameras on that page.
• Schedule runs every 6 hours to track when each stream goes live and offline.

Is it legal to scrape YouTube Live?

This Actor extracts publicly available data from YouTube Live camera pages. Web scraping of publicly accessible information is generally permitted under applicable law. Always review the target site's Terms of Service and applicable regulations (including GDPR for EU data) before use. This Actor does not bypass authentication, paywalls, or CAPTCHAs. Use responsibly and respect rate limits.

Part of VisionSync Suite

Search all 12 providers at once with VisionSync Hub -- just type a location.

Provider	Link
EarthCam	Open in Store
SkylineWebcams	Open in Store
Explore.org	Open in Store
Webcamtaxi	Open in Store
Windy	Open in Store
WhatsUpCams	Open in Store
Worldcam	Open in Store
Webcamera24	Open in Store
IPLiveCams	Open in Store
GeoCam	Open in Store
OpenWebcamDB	Open in Store