YouTube Search Scraper [From $0.20/1K 💰] Official API

Vidtrawl: YouTube Search Scraper & Trending Videos (Official API)

YouTube search results and trending charts with views, likes, comments and duration, from the official YouTube Data API with your own free key

Vidtrawl is a YouTube search scraper that does not scrape: it runs your searches through the official YouTube Data API v3 with your own free API key and returns every result with views, likes, comment count, duration, publish date, channel, tags, topics and thumbnail. Sort by relevance, date or views; filter by upload date, length, country, language, captions or Creative Commons licence; search inside one channel; or pull the trending (most popular) chart for any country. Monitor mode returns only videos it has not delivered before, so a daily schedule becomes a new-video alert for any keyword.

▶ Try it now (run it empty for a free demo of the output format) · $0.20 per 1,000 videos + $0.001 per run · Apify's free plan includes $5 of credit a month

Built for: content and SEO teams researching what ranks for a keyword on YouTube · brand and PR teams watching for new videos that mention a product · market researchers sampling a topic · agencies finding creators in a niche · AI agents that need video search as a tool

Real output (real run on Apify, 12 Nov 2026: 2 searches + the US trending chart, 148 videos in 3.8 s, 204 API units):

Search	#	Title	Channel	Published	Length	Views	Likes
web scraping tutorial	1	Learn Web Scraping in 5 Minutes (NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE)	CodeHead	2026-03-05	4:53	188,610	6,852
web scraping tutorial	3	Python Web Scraping Tutorial: Complete Guide 2026	Oxylabs	2026-02-20	8:01	9,442	555
trending:US	48	My GODDESS Forbidden Love!	Aphmau	2026-11-11	21:31	95,653	3,763
trending:US	50	The Elite: Army Rangers | Official Trailer | Paramount+	Paramount Plus	2026-11-11	1:31	46,317	523

{
  "type": "video",
  "query": "web scraping tutorial",
  "position": 1,
  "videoId": "hHQlcnubuFI",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHQlcnubuFI",
  "title": "Learn Web Scraping in 5 Minutes (NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE)",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-05T15:01:30Z",
  "channelTitle": "CodeHead",
  "durationSeconds": 293,
  "duration": "4:53",
  "views": 188610,
  "likes": 6852,
  "comments": 96,
  "tags": ["web dev", "programming tutorials", "learn to code"],
  "hasCaptions": false,
  "topics": ["Knowledge", "Technology"],
  "retrievedAt": "2026-11-12T03:04:05.396Z"
}

What it costs

What	Price
Video returned	$0.0002 ($0.20 per 1,000)
Run started (once per run, after YouTube accepts your key)	$0.001
Searches with no results, videos under your minimum views, API errors, videos already delivered in monitor mode, demo runs, runs with a refused key	free

Example: 20 searches × 50 results = 1,000 videos for $0.201. Prices of other Store Actors for the same job on 12 Nov 2026 (their Free-plan tier): grow_media/youtube-search-api $1.00 per 1,000, delicious_zebu/youtube-video-scraper-by-keyword $1.20 per 1,000, api-ninja/youtube-search-scraper $5.00 per 1,000 + $0.01 per run, streamers/youtube-scraper $4.00 per 1,000. Those need no API key; Vidtrawl needs your free key.

The limit to know: on YouTube's API a page of 50 search results costs 100 units, so the free 10,000 daily units cover about 100 result pages (5,000 results) a day. Trending charts cost 1 unit per 50 videos. Need more? Ask Google for a higher quota, or spread schedules over the day.

Get your free YouTube Data API key (about 3 minutes, once)

1. Open Google Cloud Console and create a project (any name; no billing account is needed for this API).
2. Go to APIs & Services → Library, search YouTube Data API v3 and press Enable.
3. Go to APIs & Services → Credentials → Create credentials → API key.
4. Optional but wise: edit the key, set API restrictions → YouTube Data API v3, and leave Application restrictions on None (the Actor calls Google from Apify's servers).
5. Paste the key into the YouTube Data API key field. It is a secret input: Apify stores it encrypted, the Actor sends it only to googleapis.com and never writes it to the log or the dataset.

Google gives every project 10,000 API units a day for free; the quota resets at midnight Pacific time. If you run out, the run stops cleanly, keeps what it has and tells you; you can ask Google for a higher quota in the same console.

How to use it

1. Paste your YouTube Data API key.
2. Add search terms, one per line, and choose Results per search.
3. Optional: sort order, date range, length, country, language, minimum views.
4. Optional: add Trending: countries (US, GB, DE…) for the most-popular chart.
5. Run and download JSON, CSV or Excel.

Ready-made inputs

{ "apiKey": "YOUR_KEY", "queries": ["web scraping tutorial"], "maxResultsPerQuery": 50 }

{ "apiKey": "YOUR_KEY", "queries": ["your brand name"], "sortBy": "date", "publishedAfter": "7 days", "monitor": true }

{ "apiKey": "YOUR_KEY", "trendingRegions": ["US", "GB", "DE"], "maxTrendingPerRegion": 50, "trendingCategoryId": "20" }

Run it on a schedule (only new videos)

Turn on Monitor mode, set Sort by: Upload date and schedule the Actor daily. Each run returns only videos it has not delivered before for that watchlist; a run with nothing new costs only the $0.001 run fee (and 100 API units per search on your side).

Integrations

• API: POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cybermax~youtube-search-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items.
• Python / JavaScript: apify-client.
• AI agents (MCP): https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=cybermax/youtube-search-scraper.
• No code: Make, Zapier and n8n through their Apify apps.

Why Vidtrawl

• Official search. The same search service YouTube offers developers, with exact statistics for every result.
• Real filters: date range, length, country, language, captions, Creative Commons, one channel.
• Trending by country and category in the same run.
• Fast and dependable: no browser, no proxies; 148 videos in under 4 seconds.
• Honest limits: about 5,000 search results a day on the free quota, at most about 500 results per search, and results can differ slightly from what a signed-in person sees on youtube.com.

FAQ

Why do I need my own API key? YouTube's terms forbid scraping its site; its official API is the legitimate route, and Google issues the free quota per project.

Why did a nonsense search still return videos? YouTube's search is fuzzy and often returns loosely related videos. Use quotes for exact phrases and Minimum views to drop noise.

Can it search Shorts only? Use Length: Under 4 minutes; the API has no Shorts-only switch. For one channel's Shorts use Chanroll.

Does it return transcripts or comments? No. It returns the comment count and whether captions exist.

Can an AI agent use it? Yes, through Apify's MCP server; pass the key in the tool input.

Terms and data source

This Actor is an API client for YouTube API Services: every row comes from the official YouTube Data API v3, called with your own key and your own quota. It does not load youtube.com pages or feeds and does not download videos, audio or captions. By using it you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service; Google's handling of data is described in the Google Privacy Policy. Your Google Cloud project is the API client of record, so the YouTube API Services Terms and Developer Policies apply to how you store and use the results (for example, refresh or delete stored statistics after 30 days). CyberMax is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by YouTube or Google. YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC.

Also from CyberMax

• Chanroll: YouTube Channel Video Scraper · every upload of a channel, Shorts/long/live split, upload monitor.
• Vidvett: YouTube Video Details Scraper · bulk stats for video links and playlists, with growth deltas.
• Swellmeter: Google Trends Scraper · is interest in the topic rising?
• Keyfern: Keyword Ideas · what people type before they search.

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