YouTube Subscribers Scraper

Getting a channel's real numbers usually means signing up for the YouTube API, managing quota keys, or eyeballing a channel page and guessing. Skip all that. Hand this scraper a handle like mkbhd and it gives you the whole picture in one row: subscriber count, lifetime views, how many videos the channel has posted, when it launched, plus the avatar, banner, country, and channel ID. Check one creator or feed it a list of hundreds and let it work through them.

What you get

Every handle you submit becomes one row with the same set of columns, so results drop straight into a sheet or database. When a value isn't available it comes back as null rather than disappearing, which keeps your columns lined up. Each row covers:

• Channel stats — subscriberCount, viewCount, uploadCount, performanceGrade
• Channel profile — channelHandle, channelTitle, youtubeUrl, channelIdentifier, countryCode
• History and media — joinedDate, joinedDateText, profileImage, bannerImage
• Run metadata — collectedAt, errorMessage

Quick start

1. Click Try for free and open the input form.
2. Type one handle into Channel handle, or paste a batch into Channel handles (one per line, no @).
3. Set a Results limit if you want to cap how many channels run this time.
4. Hit Start, then export the rows as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML once the run finishes.

Use cases

• Sponsorship research — line up several creators side by side and compare reach before you spend on a deal
• Influencer shortlisting — pull stats for a list of handles and rank candidates by subscribers or views
• Growth tracking — re-run the same handles on a schedule and watch subscriber and view trends move
• Competitive benchmarking — measure your channel against rivals in the same niche
• Dashboards and reports — feed live channel numbers into your own analytics or client decks

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
youtubeHandle	string	One of youtubeHandle or youtubeHandles	A single channel handle, typed without the @ (e.g. mkbhd).
youtubeHandles	array of strings	One of youtubeHandle or youtubeHandles	Several handles to pull in one run, one per line, no @ symbol.
resultsLimit	integer	No	Most channels to process in a single run. Default 50, max 1000.
timeoutSeconds	integer	No	Seconds to wait on each request before giving up. Default 45.

Example input

{
    "youtubeHandle": "mkbhd",
    "youtubeHandles": ["mkbhd", "veritasium", "mrbeast"],
    "resultsLimit": 50,
    "timeoutSeconds": 45
}

Output

Each handle produces one row, and every field is always present — anything unavailable comes back as null so the dataset stays rectangular.

Example output

{
    "channelHandle": "mkbhd",
    "channelTitle": "Marques Brownlee",
    "youtubeUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
    "subscriberCount": 19800000,
    "viewCount": 3950000000,
    "uploadCount": 1720,
    "joinedDate": "2008-03-21T00:00:00.000Z",
    "joinedDateText": "March 21, 2008",
    "profileImage": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AIdro_example",
    "bannerImage": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/example-banner",
    "channelIdentifier": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
    "countryCode": "US",
    "performanceGrade": "A+",
    "collectedAt": "2026-06-30T10:00:00.000000+00:00",
    "errorMessage": null
}

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
channelHandle	string	The handle that was looked up, without the @
channelTitle	string	Public display name of the channel
youtubeUrl	string	Direct link to the channel on YouTube
subscriberCount	integer	Current subscriber total
viewCount	integer	Combined views across all videos
uploadCount	integer	Number of public videos on the channel
joinedDate	string	Channel creation date in ISO 8601 form
joinedDateText	string	Channel creation date written for people, e.g. March 21, 2008
profileImage	string	Link to the channel avatar
bannerImage	string	Link to the channel banner
channelIdentifier	string	YouTube channel ID in UCxxxxxxx form
countryCode	string	Two-letter country code for the channel
performanceGrade	string	Letter grade summarizing channel performance
collectedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of when the row was captured
errorMessage	string	Reason a lookup failed; null on success

Tips for best results

• Drop the @. Enter mkbhd, not @mkbhd. Handles are 3-30 characters and allow letters, numbers, underscores, hyphens, and dots.
• Test with a few first. Run three or four handles to confirm the output fits your pipeline before pushing a long list.
• Use resultsLimit to control spend. Cap it low while you test, then raise it toward 1000 for the full batch.
• Bad handles are skipped, not fatal. An invalid handle logs a warning and the run keeps going on the rest.
• A failed lookup still writes a row. The errorMessage field tells you what went wrong while the stat fields stay null, so one bad channel never stops the batch.
• Raise timeoutSeconds toward 60 if you run large batches and hit occasional timeouts.

How can I use YouTube channel data?

How can I use the YouTube Subscribers Scraper to compare creators for a sponsorship? Paste the handles of every creator on your shortlist into youtubeHandles and run them together. Each one returns subscriber count, lifetime views, and upload count in the same row shape, so you can sort the results and see who actually has the reach before you commit budget.

How can I check a YouTube channel's subscriber count without the API? Enter a single handle in youtubeHandle and start the run. There's no API key, no OAuth, and no quota to manage — you get the subscriber count along with views, video count, join date, and channel ID in one record you can export anywhere.

How can I track YouTube channel growth over time? Save your list of handles and run the scraper on a schedule — daily, weekly, whatever fits. Because collectedAt is stamped on every row, you can append each run to the same dataset and chart how subscribers and views shift for each channel.

How can I pull YouTube channel stats in bulk for research? Load all your handles into youtubeHandles, set resultsLimit to cover the whole list, and export the result as CSV or Excel. You end up with a clean table of channel metrics — subscribers, views, uploads, country, grade — ready for a spreadsheet or a database.

Is it legal to scrape data?

Our actors are ethical and do not extract any private user data, such as email addresses or private contact information. They only extract what the user has chosen to share publicly. We therefore believe that our actors, when used for ethical purposes by Apify users, are safe.

However, you should be aware that your results could contain personal data. Personal data is protected by the GDPR in the European Union and by other regulations around the world. You should not scrape personal data unless you have a legitimate reason to do so. If you're unsure whether your reason is legitimate, consult your lawyers.

You can also read Apify's blog post on the legality of web scraping.

Support

Questions, feature requests, or a field you'd like added? Reach out at data.apify@proton.me and we'll get back to you.