YouTube Channel Videos & Shorts Scraper

What is YouTube Channel Videos & Shorts Scraper?

List every video, Short and live stream of YouTube channels as clean JSON, CSV or Excel: title, link, views, upload time, duration and thumbnail of each video, plus the channel's name, handle, subscribers and video count. Newest, most popular or oldest first, like the sort buttons on YouTube.

• 💲 Pay per video: from $0.40 per 1,000 videos ($0.70 on the Free plan), plus Apify's minimum start fee of $0.00005 per run. Channels not found, missing tabs and failures are free.
• 📺 Videos, Shorts and Live tabs, separately, for up to 1,000 channels per run and up to 10,000 videos per tab.
• 🔃 Latest, Popular or Oldest first: YouTube's own sort buttons.
• 🔗 Paste what you have: @handle, channel links, /channel/UC…, /c/…, /user/… or bare UC… ids.
• ⚡ No browser, no YouTube API key, no login, no quota: light HTTP requests, five channel tabs at a time.

What data can you extract from a YouTube channel?

Field	Example
Video title, link, id	Turning raw hardware sensor data into music with Gemini
Type	video, short, stream (past live), live, upcoming
Views (number and text)	9700 · "9.7K views"
Upload time	"21 hours ago", "Streamed 4 months ago"
Duration	"1:27" · 87 s
Thumbnail	https://i.ytimg.com/vi/…
Rank in the tab	1
Channel name, id, handle, link, check-mark badge	Google for Developers, @GoogleDevelopers, ✔
Subscribers (number and text)	2680000 · "2.68M subscribers"
Channel video count	"6.1K videos"

What can you do with YouTube channel data?

• Competitor watch: list what your competitors upload, how often, and what gets the most views (Order: Most popular first).
• Influencer research: compare the subscribers and recent views of hundreds of channels in one run.
• Content planning: find the best-performing videos and Shorts of a niche to plan yours.
• Monitoring: schedule a daily run with Max videos per tab: 10 to catch every new upload.
• AI and research datasets: collect the video links of a channel, then get their transcripts with our YouTube Transcript Scraper, or find videos by keyword with our YouTube Search Scraper.

Why run it on Apify?

• API: every run is an API call, with ready clients for Python and JavaScript (see below).
• Scheduling: check your channels every hour, day or week without a server.
• Integrations: Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, n8n, webhooks and your own database.
• AI agents: available through Apify's MCP server, so Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor can call it.

How does it work?

1. Each entry of channels is recognised (handle, link or id); handles are turned into channel ids.
2. For each channel, the Actor opens each tab of tabs (Videos, Shorts, Live), clicks the sort button of sortBy when it is not "Latest", and reads the pages one after the other, like scrolling down, until it has maxResultsPerTab videos or the tab ends.
3. Each video becomes one item with its position in the tab and the channel's details. Only ok items are charged.
4. A channel that does not exist, a tab the channel does not have (no Shorts, no Live), an empty tab or a failure leaves one free item with status and note, so nothing disappears silently.

How to scrape the videos of a YouTube channel

1. Click Try for free.
2. Paste one or more channels in Channels, one per line.
3. Optional: pick the Tabs, the Order and Max videos per tab.
4. Click Start. The videos appear in the Channel videos view within seconds.
5. Download them as JSON, CSV or Excel, or connect an integration.

Input

Field	Type	Default	What it does
channels	list of text	— (required)	Channels, one per line (up to 1,000): @handle, channel link, /channel/UC…, /c/…, /user/… or a UC… id. A link to one tab (…/shorts, …/videos, …/streams, …/live) reads that tab only. The same channel twice is read once.
tabs	list	["videos"]	Tabs to read: videos, shorts, streams (Live).
sortBy	latest, popular, oldest	latest	YouTube's sort buttons on the tab.
maxResultsPerTab	number	50	Videos to take from each tab of each channel, 1 to 10,000.
maxConcurrency	number	5	Channel tabs read at the same time, 1 to 10.

Example:

{
  "channels": ["@GoogleDevelopers", "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd"],
  "tabs": ["videos", "shorts"],
  "sortBy": "popular",
  "maxResultsPerTab": 100
}

Output

One item per video, in the order of the tab:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "note": null,
  "channel": "@GoogleDevelopers",
  "tab": "videos",
  "position": 1,
  "videoId": "i3X7Fv0Z3Uc",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3X7Fv0Z3Uc",
  "title": "Turning raw hardware sensor data into music with Gemini",
  "type": "video",
  "viewCount": 9700,
  "viewCountText": "9.7K views",
  "publishedTimeText": "21 hours ago",
  "durationText": "1:27",
  "durationSeconds": 87,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/i3X7Fv0Z3Uc/hq720.jpg?…",
  "channelName": "Google for Developers",
  "channelId": "UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw",
  "channelHandle": "@GoogleDevelopers",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw",
  "channelIsVerified": true,
  "channelSubscriberCount": 2680000,
  "channelSubscriberCountText": "2.68M subscribers",
  "channelVideoCountText": "6.1K videos",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-16T18:00:00.000Z"
}

Field	Meaning
status	ok (charged). Free, one item per channel tab: no-videos (the channel has no such tab, or nothing public in it), not-found, invalid-url, failed, skipped-cost-limit.
note	Why an item has no video; null when status is ok.
channel, tab, position	The channel as you gave it, the tab (videos, shorts, streams) and the rank of the video in it.
videoId, url, title	The video; url is a /shorts/ link for a Short.
type	video, short, stream (past live stream), live (streaming now) or upcoming.
viewCount, viewCountText	Views, rounded as YouTube shows them on channel pages (9.7K → 9700), and as written.
publishedTimeText	Upload time as shown ("21 hours ago"); null for Shorts.
durationText, durationSeconds	Length; null for Shorts and live streams in progress.
thumbnailUrl	Largest thumbnail.
channelName, channelId, channelHandle, channelUrl, channelIsVerified	The channel; channelIsVerified is YouTube's check-mark badge.
channelSubscriberCount, channelSubscriberCountText	Subscribers, rounded as YouTube shows them, and as written.
channelVideoCountText	Number of videos as shown on the channel ("6.1K videos").
scrapedAt	When the item was produced (UTC).

The run summary (counts, errors, duration) is in the key-value store under OUTPUT.

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube channel videos?

You pay per video delivered:

Apify plan	Price per video	Per 1,000 videos
Free	$0.0007	$0.70
Starter (Bronze)	$0.0005	$0.50
Scale (Silver)	$0.00045	$0.45
Business (Gold) and above	$0.0004	$0.40

Plus Apify's start fee of $0.00005 per run. Free: channels not found, missing or empty tabs, links that are not channels, failures, and tabs cut by your cost limit. The $5 monthly credit of Apify's Free plan covers about 7,000 videos a month. Set Maximum cost per run in the run options to cap a run: the Actor stops before going over it and never delivers more than it charged.

Is it free to try?

Yes. Apify's Free plan gives $5 of credit every month, with no card needed.

Use it from code

Python (pip install apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("datafabrik/youtube-channel-videos").call(run_input={
    "channels": ["@mkbhd"],
    "tabs": ["videos", "shorts"],
    "maxResultsPerTab": 100,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if item["status"] == "ok":
        print(item["tab"], item["title"], item["viewCount"])

JavaScript (npm install apify-client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('datafabrik/youtube-channel-videos').call({ channels: ['@GoogleDevelopers'], sortBy: 'popular' });
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.map((i) => `${i.position}. ${i.title}`));

Limits

• Views and subscribers are rounded as YouTube shows them on channel pages ("9.7K"). Upload times are relative ("3 months ago"); YouTube gives no exact date on channel pages. For exact details and the full transcript, pass the urls to our YouTube Transcript Scraper.
• YouTube shows Shorts with their title and views only: no upload time nor duration. Some channels hide their view counts: viewCount is then null.
• popular and oldest use YouTube's sort buttons. On the rare tab that has several pages but no sort button, these orders give a free failed item instead of a wrong order.
• Playlists, posts, members-only videos and the channel's About page are not included.
• Channels are read as a visitor who is not logged in, from the United States.

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape YouTube channels?

The Actor reads public channel pages that YouTube shows to any visitor, without login. It does not collect personal data such as emails. You are responsible for how you use the data, in line with YouTube's terms; check with a lawyer for commercial reuse.

How do I get only the new videos of a channel every day?

Schedule a run every day with sortBy latest and a small maxResultsPerTab (10), then keep the videoIds you have not seen yet.

Why did a channel come back with no-videos?

The channel has no tab of that kind (many channels have no Shorts or Live tab), or nothing public in it. The note says which. It is not charged.

Do I need a YouTube API key or an account?

No, and there is no daily quota. The Actor uses the same public endpoints as YouTube's website.

Can you add a feature or build a custom scraper?

Yes: open an issue on the Issues tab, we answer within a day.