🎯 YouTube Channel Videos Scraper

📺 What does YouTube Scraper do?

This actor extracts public metadata from a YouTube channel's /videos page. It focuses on parsing the channel's video listing and returning a dataset of video items with basic metadata (id, title, thumbnail, duration, published time, channel info and view counts).

• 🔎 Extracts core channel-video fields: video id, title, thumbnail URL, duration (text and seconds), published timestamp (ISO when parseable), published text, channel id/name/url/thumbnail/handle (when available), view count (numeric) and view text
• ⚡ Designed for quick runs by providing channelId and optional limit (number of videos to return)
• 💾 Outputs results to the Apify dataset so you can download JSON/CSV/Excel from the Storage tab

💡 How to use scraped YouTube data

You can use the scraped data to:

• 📈 Monitor channel activity and content catalog
• 🧾 Collect public metadata for analytics or aggregation
• 🔗 Feed video metadata into other tools (dashboards, recommender systems, ETL pipelines)

🔎 What data can you scrape from a channel?

This actor returns (from the channel's /videos listing):

• Video id, title, thumbnail URL
• Duration (text) and duration in seconds
• Published timestamp (ISO) and a published text string
• Channel id, name, URL and thumbnail/handle when available
• View count (numeric) and human-readable view text

The actor focuses on metadata visible on the channel's videos page and follows continuation tokens to collect multiple pages when needed.

🚀 How to scrape channel videos — quick start

This actor is intentionally simple. Current inputs are listed in INPUT_SCHEMA.json and the actor runs locally or on Apify.

1. Configure or review INPUT_SCHEMA.json (the actor requires channelId and accepts limit).
2. Provide a channel identifier in the channelId field (see examples below) and optionally limit.
3. Click Start in Apify Console or run the actor locally with npm start.
4. Download results from the Storage → Dataset tab.

⬆️ Input example

You can provide input via the Apify Console fields or directly as JSON.

Example (channel videos):

{
  "channelId": "UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw",
  "limit": 24
}

Supported channelId forms:

• Channel ID: UC_x5XG1...
• Channel handle: @channelHandle or the canonical name used in channel URLs

🔗 How the actor fetches data

• The actor tries several channel URL patterns (e.g. /channel/<id>/videos, /@<handle>/videos, /c/<name>/videos) to locate the videos page.
• It parses the initial HTML and, when available, follows Innertube continuation tokens to fetch more results until the requested limit or an internal iteration limit is reached.

⬇️ Output example

Results are stored as a dataset (Storage tab). The dataset preview shows a table but may hide some fields — download the full JSON for complete data.

Example dataset record (trimmed):

[
  {
    "id": "CW7gfrTlr0Y",
    "title": "Example video title",
    "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CW7gfrTlr0Y/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "duration": "00:03:17",
    "duration_seconds": 197,
    "publishedAt": "2021-12-21T00:00:00.000Z",
    "publishedText": "4 years ago",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW7gfrTlr0Y",
    "channel": {
      "id": "UC...",
      "name": "Channel Name",
      "url": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC...",
      "thumbnail": "https://...",
      "handle": "@example"
    },
    "viewCountText": "35,582,192 views",
    "views": 35582192
  }
]

🧰 Specialized scrapers and related tools

• 💬 Fast YouTube Videos Scraper
• 🏎 Fast YouTube Channel Scraper
• ▶️ Fast YouTube Channel Videos Scraper
• 📽️ Fast YouTube Channel Videos Scraper Fallback

You can combine results with other social media scrapers (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) or feed data to AI agents (e.g., sentiment analysis, influencer discovery).

🧰 Notes & tips

• The actor scrapes public HTML that YouTube serves for channel pages. Results depend on YouTube's page structure and may change if YouTube updates their HTML/JS.
• If you need to extract comments, subtitles, or other specialized data, consider using or building a dedicated actor for those tasks.

❓ FAQ

• How much does scraping cost?

  • Costs depend on where you run the actor. On Apify check the actor's pricing tab. Running locally only costs your compute and network resources.

• How many videos can I scrape?

  • The actor can collect many items by following continuation tokens. In tests it can reach tens of thousands in optimal conditions, but actual throughput depends on input complexity, location, proxies, and YouTube's behavior. Run a short test to confirm.

• Should I use a proxy?

  • For reliable large-scale scraping use proxies (datacenter or Apify Proxy recommended).

• Is scraping YouTube legal?

  • Scraping public data is generally lawful, but comply with copyright and data protection laws (e.g., GDPR). Do not collect personal/sensitive data without a lawful basis.

🐞 Feedback & issues

If you find bugs or have suggestions, open an issue in the repository or in the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console.

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If you want, I can also add a short example showing how to run the actor locally with a small Node script or how to call it via the Apify API — tell me which one you prefer and I’ll add it.