YouTube Comments Scraper – Extract Comments from Any YouTube Video

Extract every comment, reply, like count, and author profile from any YouTube video—at scale. Whether you need to analyze audience sentiment, moderate user discussions, collect testimonials, or build a dataset for machine learning, this actor pulls structured comment data from one video or hundreds.

Why scrape YouTube comments?

YouTube comments are a goldmine of real-world data. Marketers mine them for product feedback and trend signals. Creators analyze sentiment to understand their audience. Researchers study conversation dynamics across millions of videos. Recruiters spot emerging talent in comment sections. And brands track how their campaigns are being talked about.

Manually copying comments is not viable beyond a handful of videos. This actor automates the entire process, delivering clean, structured data you can import into any tool.

Example output

{
  "id": "UgzNF6YV0mlS2GWceOZ4AaABAg",
  "parent": "root",
  "text": "I didn't get rickrolled today, I just really enjoy this song",
  "like_count": 363000,
  "author_id": "UCA1oEnRYKBmFDAcoKso2pAA",
  "author": "@CinematicCaptures",
  "author_thumbnail": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AIdro_m2p2NbssAK79AX2uQzEvNPnnEIAIlB-PdN9Q4GSiqP7k8=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
  "author_is_uploader": false,
  "author_is_verified": true,
  "author_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@CinematicCaptures",
  "is_favorited": false,
  "_time_text": "5 years ago",
  "timestamp": 1620950400,
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "video_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "video_title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)"
}

Example input

{
  "maxCommentsPerUrl": 100,
  "sortCommentsBy": "top",
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
  ]
}

What data does it collect?

For each comment, the actor returns:

• Comment text – the full message, including emojis
• Author name – the display name of the channel
• Author profile URL – direct link to the commenter's channel
• Author ID – unique YouTube channel identifier
• Author thumbnail – profile picture URL
• Verified status – whether the author's channel is verified
• Uploader badge – whether the author is the video uploader
• Like count – how many likes the comment received
• Timestamp – when the comment was posted (Unix + human-readable)
• Comment ID – unique identifier, useful for threading replies
• Parent ID – links replies to their parent comment
• Favorited status – whether the comment was marked as a favorite
• Video ID & URL – which video the comment belongs to
• Video title – the title of the video

Who is this for?

• Content creators and YouTube agencies – understand what your audience is saying across your entire channel
• Social media marketers – track campaign mentions, brand sentiment, and competitor discussions
• Data analysts and researchers – build large-scale comment datasets for NLP, sentiment analysis, or academic research
• Community managers – identify trending discussions, top-liked feedback, and potential issues
• Product teams – extract feature requests and bug reports from relevant video discussions

What makes it different?

• Set it and forget it – provide the video URLs, choose your settings, and let the actor run
• Sort by top or newest – decide whether you want the most engaged comments or the most recent discussion
• Control comments per video – set a maximum number of comments per URL, or scrape everything
• Residential proxy support – avoids rate limits and blocks during large extractions
• Structured output – clean JSON ready for spreadsheets, databases, or analysis pipelines
• Multiple videos at once – pass as many video URLs as you need in a single run

Popular use cases

• Sentiment analysis – classify comments as positive, negative, or neutral to gauge audience reaction
• Competitor research – analyze what people are saying about competing channels and products
• Content ideation – spot recurring questions and topics your audience wants you to cover
• Influencer vetting – review engagement quality in an influencer's comment section
• Giveaway moderation – collect and verify entries from comment-based giveaways
• Brand monitoring – track mentions of your brand across YouTube discussions

Getting started

1. Open the actor on Apify Console
2. Paste one or more YouTube video URLs
3. Choose your sorting order (Top or Newest)
4. Set the maximum comments to collect per video (or 0 for unlimited)
5. Run the actor
6. Export your data as JSON, CSV, Excel, or connect it to any of the 200+ integrations

Your data is delivered as a clean dataset you can download, stream via API, or push directly to cloud storage, databases, and analytics tools.