YouTube Comments Scraper — Extract Comments, Replies & Engagement Data

Extract comments from any YouTube video without a YouTube Data API key. Uses YouTube's internal API to fetch comments with author info, likes, timestamps, reply counts, and full thread structure. No API quotas, no OAuth — just provide a video URL.

Key Features

• No API key required — bypasses YouTube Data API quotas entirely
• Full comment data — text, author, likes, timestamps, reply counts
• Sort options — top comments (most relevant) or newest first
• Pagination — automatically fetches up to 10,000 comments per video
• Structured JSON output — clean, consistent data ready for analysis
• Export to any format — JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS

Use Cases

1. Sentiment Analysis

Collect thousands of comments to analyze audience reaction to product launches, announcements, music releases, or controversial topics. Feed the data into NLP pipelines to measure sentiment at scale.

2. Content Research & Ideation

Discover what questions viewers ask, what topics spark discussion, and what pain points your audience has. Use comment data to inform your content calendar and video topics.

3. Competitor Analysis

Monitor comments on competitor videos to understand their audience's needs, complaints, and feature requests. Identify gaps you can fill with your own content or products.

4. Brand Monitoring

Track mentions of your brand, products, or competitors across YouTube comment sections. Set up scheduled runs to monitor new comments on relevant videos.

5. Community Insights

Export comments for analysis outside YouTube Studio. Build dashboards, generate word clouds, or track engagement trends over time.

6. Academic Research

Collect large-scale comment datasets for research on online discourse, misinformation, audience behavior, or platform dynamics.

Input Parameters

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
videoId	string	Yes	—	YouTube video ID or full URL (e.g. dQw4w9WgXcQ or full youtube.com URL)
maxComments	integer	No	10	Maximum comments to scrape (max 10,000)
sortBy	string	No	top	Sort order: top (most relevant) or newest

Input Examples

Basic usage:

{
    "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "maxComments": 100,
    "sortBy": "top"
}

Full URL input:

{
    "videoId": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "maxComments": 500,
    "sortBy": "newest"
}

Output Format

Each comment returns a structured JSON object:

Field	Type	Description
text	string	Full comment text
author	string	Display name of the commenter
authorChannelId	string	YouTube channel ID of the commenter
likes	integer	Number of likes on the comment
publishedTime	string	Relative timestamp (e.g., "2 months ago")
replyCount	integer	Number of replies to this comment
videoId	string	ID of the source video

Sample Output

{
    "text": "This video changed my perspective on web scraping. Great tutorial!",
    "author": "TechEnthusiast",
    "authorChannelId": "UC...",
    "likes": 142,
    "publishedTime": "2 months ago",
    "replyCount": 5,
    "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ"
}

Code Examples

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("cryptosignals/youtube-comments-scraper").call(run_input={
    "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "maxComments": 200,
    "sortBy": "top",
})

for comment in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(f"{comment['author']}: {comment['text'][:80]}... ({comment['likes']} likes)")

Batch scraping multiple videos:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")

video_ids = ["dQw4w9WgXcQ", "jNQXAC9IVRw", "kJQP7kiw5Fk"]

for vid in video_ids:
    run = client.actor("cryptosignals/youtube-comments-scraper").call(run_input={
        "videoId": vid,
        "maxComments": 100,
        "sortBy": "top",
    })
    comments = list(client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items())
    total_likes = sum(c.get("likes", 0) for c in comments)
    print(f"Video {vid}: {len(comments)} comments, {total_likes} total likes")

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('cryptosignals/youtube-comments-scraper').call({
    videoId: 'dQw4w9WgXcQ',
    maxComments: 200,
    sortBy: 'top',
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

for (const comment of items) {
    console.log(`${comment.author}: ${comment.text.slice(0, 80)}... (${comment.likes} likes)`);
}

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cryptosignals~youtube-comments-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ", "maxComments": 100, "sortBy": "top"}'

Integrations

Connect this scraper to 5,000+ apps via Apify's built-in integrations:

• Google Sheets — export comments to spreadsheets for team analysis
• Zapier — trigger workflows when new comments match criteria
• Make (Integromat) — build automated sentiment analysis pipelines
• Slack / Email — get notified about comment trends
• Webhooks — send results to any HTTP endpoint in real-time

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-result pricing. You only pay for comments successfully extracted.

Usage	Estimated Cost
100 comments	~$0.50-$1.00
500 comments	~$1.50-$3.00
1,000 comments	~$2.50-$5.00

Free tier available: Apify's free plan includes $5/month in platform credits.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key?

No. This scraper uses YouTube's internal API endpoint, bypassing the official Data API entirely. No key, no OAuth, no quota limits.

How many comments can I scrape per video?

Up to 10,000 comments per run. For videos with more comments, run multiple times with different sort orders to maximize coverage.

Can I get reply threads?

The scraper returns the reply count for each top-level comment. Full reply thread extraction is available for top comments.

What sort options are available?

top returns YouTube's default "Top comments" (most relevant/liked), newest returns comments in reverse chronological order.

Is the data real-time?

Yes. Comments are fetched live from YouTube at the time of the run.

Related Actors

• cryptosignals/youtube-scraper — Scrape video metadata, channels & search results
• cryptosignals/google-search-scraper — Find YouTube videos via search

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