YouTube search, channel, Shorts, and comments scraper

Choose one clear workflow: search standard YouTube video results by keyword, collect the Videos, Shorts, or Live tab from known channels, or extract comments from specific video URLs. Results are saved as structured Dataset rows.

Try the YouTube Search & Comments Scraper on Apify.

🔎 What can you do with this YouTube scraper?

• 🔎 Search YouTube for up to 20 topics, keywords, or phrases in one run.
• 📺 Collect public videos, Shorts, or live entries from channel URLs and @handles.
• 🔗 Scrape comments directly from YouTube watch, Shorts, live, or youtu.be URLs.
• 🎬 Save up to 1,000 unique video results across all searches.
• 📋 Collect video titles, URLs, channel names, durations, publish information, and displayed view counts.
• 💬 Optionally collect up to 2,000 public comments per video.
• ↩️ Optionally include up to 500 public replies per comment.
• 🔗 Keep replies connected to their original comments.
• 📥 Download results in CSV, Excel, JSON, and other common formats.
• 📅 Schedule repeat runs or connect the results to other apps through Apify.

Comments and replies are turned off by default, making it easy to create a simple YouTube search-results dataset. Turn them on only when you need them.

Choose the right workflow

Workflow	What you provide	What it returns
Search videos by keyword	Topics, keywords, or phrases	Standard YouTube video search results, with optional comments and replies
Collect a known channel	Channel URL, @handle, or channel ID	Entries from that channel's Videos, Shorts, or Live tab, with optional comments and replies
Comments from video URLs	Watch, Shorts, live, youtu.be URLs, or video IDs	Public comments and optional replies from those exact videos

Keyword search currently targets standard video results. It does not search for channels by keyword and it does not provide a Shorts-only keyword filter. To collect channel Shorts, provide the channel directly and select the Shorts tab.

👥 Who is this Actor for?

• 🎥 Content creators researching videos and audience reactions around a topic.
• 📣 Marketing teams comparing channels, content, and viewer discussions.
• 🔬 Researchers building datasets for text analysis or academic work.
• 🏢 Agencies collecting public comments for qualitative review.
• 📰 Media teams tracking which videos appear for selected keywords.
• 📊 Analysts exporting structured YouTube search and comment data.

This Actor collects source data. It does not generate sentiment scores, summaries, transcripts, or engagement predictions.

🚀 How to run the Actor

1. Open the Actor's Input tab.
2. Choose a workflow.
3. Open the matching source section and enter search queries, channels, or video URLs.
4. Choose the maximum number of videos to process.
5. For search and channel workflows, turn on Include comments when needed.
6. Turn on Include replies to preserve public discussion threads.
7. Click Start, then open Output to review or download the Dataset.

Enabling replies also enables comments because every reply belongs to a comment thread.

⚙️ Input

Setting	What it controls	Starting value
Workflow	Selects keyword search, known-channel collection, or direct comments	Search videos by keyword
Search queries	Topics, keywords, or phrases for standard video search	OpenAI Codex tutorial
Channel URLs	Known channel URLs, @handles, or channel IDs	@OpenAI example
Channel tab	Videos, Shorts, or live-stream entries from known channels	Videos
Video URLs or IDs	Exact videos or Shorts whose comments should be collected	Example video URL
Maximum videos	Total unique videos saved across all queries	20
Include comments	Whether public top-level comments are collected	Off
Maximum comments per video	Comment limit for each video	100
Include replies	Whether public replies are collected	Off
Maximum replies per comment	Reply limit for each top-level comment	50
Language code	YouTube interface language used for requests	en
Country code	Country context used to localize results	US

Only the source section matching the selected workflow is used. For a quick first run, keep Search videos by keyword, replace the example query, and leave comments and replies turned off.

📦 What data does the Actor return?

Results are stored in an Apify Dataset. Depending on your choices, the Dataset contains video rows, comment rows, and reply rows.

🎬 Video results

Data	Description
Search query	The query that found the video
Video title	The title shown in YouTube search
Video ID and URL	The video's identifier and direct link
Channel	The channel name shown with the result
Published	The publication information displayed by YouTube
Duration	The displayed video length
Views	The displayed view-count text
Collected at	When the result was saved

💬 Comments and replies

Data	Description
Video ID and URL	The video connected to the comment
Comment ID	The unique comment or reply identifier
Parent comment ID	The original comment connected to a reply
Author	The displayed author name and channel ID
Text	The public comment or reply text
Published	The publication information displayed by YouTube
Likes	The displayed like count
Reply count	The number of replies shown for a top-level comment
Collected at	When the result was saved

You can download the Dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, JSONL, XML, HTML, or RSS from the Apify Console.

🧪 Example

Suppose you want to research videos about home coffee brewing:

• Enter home coffee brewing as the search query.
• Set Maximum videos to 10.
• Turn on Include comments.
• Leave Include replies off.

The result will contain up to 10 matching video rows plus the requested public comments for each video. You can then export the Dataset to Excel or CSV for review.

🎯 Use cases

📊 Build a YouTube search-results dataset

Search for one or more topics and export video titles, channels, links, durations, publish information, and displayed views.

📤 Export YouTube comments

Collect public comment text with author details, likes, publication information, and the source video link. Download the results for research or review.

🗣️ Study audience discussions

Include replies to preserve public conversations and the relationship between a reply and its original comment.

🔄 Compare content across keywords

Run several search queries together to see which unique videos and channels appear for different topics.

📺 Export videos from a known channel

Provide a channel URL, @handle, or channel ID and select its Videos, Shorts, or Live tab. This is direct channel collection, not channel discovery by keyword.

📱 Collect Shorts and Shorts comments

Select a known channel's Shorts tab to export its public Shorts. To collect comments from exact Shorts, use the direct video-comments workflow with Shorts URLs and optionally enable replies.

💵 Pricing

This Actor is free to use. Standard Apify platform usage charges may still apply based on your Apify plan and the resources used by each run. See the Pricing tab for current details.

⚠️ Limitations

• 🌐 Only public information available without signing in can be collected.
• 🔒 Private, members-only, age-restricted, or otherwise unavailable content is not supported.
• 💬 Videos with comments turned off cannot return comments.
• 🇺🇸 Search results default to an English-language, United States context.
• 🌍 Language and country context can be changed in the Actor input.
• 🔄 Titles, view counts, comments, and rankings can change between runs.
• 📚 The Actor searches standard YouTube video results; it is not a complete archive of every video on YouTube.
• 🔎 Channel discovery by keyword and Shorts-only keyword search are not supported.

Please use collected data responsibly and follow applicable laws and platform rules.

❓ Frequently asked questions

💬 Can I scrape YouTube comments?

Yes. Enter a search query and turn on Include comments. The Actor will first find matching videos and then collect the public comments available for those videos. Comments that are disabled, private, or unavailable cannot be returned.

↩️ Can I collect replies to YouTube comments?

Yes. Turn on Include replies and choose the maximum number of replies per comment. Replies are saved with the ID of their original comment so the conversation can be reconstructed after export.

📥 Can I export YouTube comments to Excel or CSV?

Yes. When the run finishes, open the Dataset in the Output tab and select the format you want. Apify supports Excel, CSV, JSON, and several other export formats.

🚫 Why did a video return no comments?

The video's comments may be disabled, restricted, unavailable without signing in, or temporarily missing from the public page. Other successfully collected videos remain available in the same Dataset.

🔑 Do I need a YouTube API key?

No. Enter your search queries directly in the Actor input and start the run.

📅 Can I run the same search regularly?

Yes. Apify lets you schedule Actor runs. This is useful when you want to refresh a search-results or comments dataset on a recurring basis.