YouTube Scraper

Scrape YouTube videos by search keyword or by channel (URL, @handle, or UC… id) using YouTube's internal InnerTube (youtubei/v1) JSON API. No API key, no cookies, no login. Auto-paginates via continuation tokens to reach your requested item count.

For every video it returns: videoId, title, watch url, channelName, channelId, viewCountText, publishedTimeText, lengthText, and the largest thumbnail.

$0.135 per 1,000 videos ($0.000135 each), plus $0.001 each time a run starts. Flat rate — no volume tiers, no plan gates — and you are charged only for videos actually returned. That is under the $0.20 to $0.40 per 1,000 charged by the highest-traffic YouTube search and channel scrapers on the Store, though a few metadata-only listings price lower.

What it does

• Search mode — give one or more keywords; each query returns up to maxItems matching videos.
• Channel mode — give one or more channels; each returns up to maxItems of its newest videos.

You can use either mode or both in a single run. Results are de-duplicated by videoId across all queries and channels, so you never pay for the same video twice in one run.

Input

Field	Type	Description
searchQueries	string[]	Keywords to search, one per line. Optional if you supply channelUrls.
channelUrls	string[]	Channel URLs, @handles, or raw UC… ids. Optional if you supply searchQueries.
maxItems	integer	Max videos per query and per channel (1–1000, default 50).
proxyConfiguration	object	Proxy for all requests. Residential Apify Proxy is strongly recommended — YouTube blocks datacenter/cloud IPs aggressively.

You must provide at least one of searchQueries or channelUrls. If both are empty the actor pushes an uncharged BAD_INPUT diagnostic row (it does not crash).

Example input

{
  "searchQueries": ["lofi hip hop", "python tutorial"],
  "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@LofiGirl", "UCSJ4gkVC6NrvII8umztf0Ow"],
  "maxItems": 50,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Output

Each successful video is one dataset row with ok: true:

{
  "ok": true,
  "videoId": "n61ULEU7CO0",
  "title": "lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n61ULEU7CO0",
  "channelName": "Lofi Girl",
  "channelId": "UCSJ4gkVC6NrvII8umztf0Ow",
  "viewCountText": "123,456 views",
  "publishedTimeText": "2 years ago",
  "lengthText": "1:02:33",
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/n61ULEU7CO0/hqdefault.jpg",
  "mode": "search"
}

Nullable / empty fields

YouTube's modern channel grid uses a different layout than search results, so a few fields can come back as an empty string "" depending on which layout a video uses:

• channelId — may be empty for some channel-grid videos (the grid layout does not always carry the id).
• viewCountText, publishedTimeText, lengthText — may be empty for live streams, premieres, or radio-style "videos" that have no view count or fixed duration.
• thumbnail — falls back to https://i.ytimg.com/vi/<videoId>/hqdefault.jpg if no source URL is present, so it is rarely empty.

videoId, title, and url are always present on ok: true rows.

Pricing

Event	When	Price
Actor start	Once per run, per GB of run memory	$0.001
Video returned	Each genuine ok: true video row	$0.000135 ($0.135 / 1,000)

• Blocked, rate-limited, network-error, and empty (NO_RESULTS) runs are never charged. When something goes wrong the actor pushes an ok: false diagnostic row with an errorCode instead of charging you.
• Videos are de-duplicated by videoId across every query and channel in the run, so you never pay twice for the same video in one run.
• 1,000 videos costs $0.136 all in. A two-keyword, one-channel run at the default maxItems: 50 returns up to 150 videos for about $0.02.

Diagnostics

On any failure the actor pushes a diagnostic row (ok: false) carrying a clear errorCode rather than silently returning nothing:

errorCode	Meaning
BAD_INPUT	No searchQueries or channelUrls were provided.
BLOCKED	YouTube blocked the request (anti-bot / 403). Use a residential proxy.
RATE_LIMITED	Hit a 429. The actor backed off and retried; lower volume or add a proxy.
SERVER_ERROR	YouTube returned a 5xx. Usually transient — retry later.
NO_RESULTS	The request succeeded but matched no videos for your input.
NETWORK	A network error reaching YouTube.

Troubleshooting

• Got NO_RESULTS or BLOCKED for a channel you know has videos? YouTube blocks cloud/datacenter IPs aggressively. Enable Apify Proxy with the RESIDENTIAL group and re-run — this resolves the large majority of empty/blocked results.
• RATE_LIMITED on large runs? A high maxItems (toward 1000) requires many paginated requests. Lower maxItems, run fewer queries per run, or keep the residential proxy on.
• Channel won't resolve (BAD_INPUT: could not resolve channel)? Double-check the handle/URL, or pass the raw UC… channel id directly.

Billing

Two charges apply: a $0.001 run-start fee each time a run begins, and the per-result fee for results actually delivered. Samples, diagnostics, duplicates, blocked look-ups and no-result runs never incur the per-result fee — a run that returns nothing costs only the $0.001 start fee.