YouTube Search Scraper

Search YouTube by keyword and get clean, structured results for every video. Returns the video id, title, channel (name + id + URL), view count, length, publish time, description, thumbnails and more. Each query is paginated automatically via YouTube's continuation token.

Unofficial. This Actor is not affiliated with, authorized, or endorsed by YouTube or Google LLC. It is an independent tool that retrieves publicly available data via a third-party API. Use it in compliance with YouTube's terms and all applicable laws; you are responsible for how you use the retrieved data.

What it does

• Keyword search — give one or more queries; the Actor paginates YouTube search results for each until maxItems is reached.
• Sort & locale — order by relevance, upload date, view count, or "this month", and set the language and country for region-aware results.
• Clean output — flat, ready-to-use records (no raw YouTube innertube blobs).

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchKeywords	string[]	["python tutorial"]	Queries to search. Each is paginated independently.
maxItems	integer	20	Max total videos across all keywords.
orderBy	enum	this_month	relevance / upload_date / view_count / this_month.
languageCode	string	en	ISO language code (e.g. en, es, zh).
countryCode	string	us	ISO country code (e.g. us, gb, in).

Example input

{
  "searchKeywords": ["python tutorial", "rust async"],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "orderBy": "view_count",
  "languageCode": "en",
  "countryCode": "us"
}

Output

One dataset item per video:

{
  "videoId": "S5tOMUCvPFA",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5tOMUCvPFA",
  "title": "How I would learn Python programming FAST (If I could start over)",
  "author": "Tech With Tim",
  "channelId": "UC4JX40jDee_tINbkjycV4Sg",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4JX40jDee_tINbkjycV4Sg",
  "viewCount": 20391,
  "videoLength": "13:37",
  "publishedTime": "12 days ago",
  "description": "The best beginner-friendly Python resources ...",
  "isLiveContent": null,
  "category": null,
  "type": "NORMAL",
  "keywords": [],
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/S5tOMUCvPFA/hq720.jpg",
  "thumbnails": [{ "url": "https://...", "width": 720, "height": 404 }],
  "source": "search:python tutorial"
}

Notes

• Data is sourced live; the upstream API occasionally rate-limits, so the Actor retries transient blocks with exponential backoff.
• Video IDs are de-duplicated within a run.

Quick start

1. Open the Actor and press Run — the default input works out of the box.
2. Adjust the input fields below to your target (keywords, IDs, or URLs) and set maxItems to cap spend.
3. Grab results from the Dataset tab as JSON / CSV / Excel, or pull them via the Apify API and MCP from your own code.

No proxies to configure, no cookies to paste, no login — the Actor handles everything server-side.

Why teams switch to this YouTube search scraper

The official YouTube Data API burns quota fast and caps results; browser scrapers are slow and break. This Actor uses a direct HTTP API to return search results — title, channel, views, duration, publish date, and video URL — as clean JSON at $3 per 1,000 videos, with no quota to manage.

What people build with it

• Topic research — map every video ranking for your keywords, with views and recency to gauge demand.
• Competitor monitoring — track who ranks for your category terms and how their catalogue grows.
• Content gap analysis — find high-search, low-quality topics worth making better videos about.
• Discovery pipelines — feed results into transcript or channel actors to build a full text corpus.
• Datasets — keyword-scoped video metadata with engagement signals for research or training.

Tips for better results

• Pass several specific queries rather than one broad term for cleaner coverage.
• Turn discovered videos into text with YouTube Transcript Scraper, or expand a channel with YouTube Channel Videos Scraper.
• All counts are numeric, so ranking and filtering downstream is trivial.

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Why this Actor

• Direct API, no headless browser — fast, stable runs with nothing to babysit.
• No login, no cookies — we never touch your accounts, so there's no ban risk.
• Fresh, real-time data — every run reads the source live, not a stale cache.
• Pay per result — you're billed only for the rows actually delivered.
• Structured JSON — export to CSV, Excel, or JSON, or pull straight from the API / MCP.

Use cases

• Track trends, keywords, and hashtags as they emerge.
• Find top creators and viral content in any niche.
• Run competitor and category research at scale.
• Build content-idea pipelines and trend dashboards.

FAQ

Do I need an account, cookies, or to log in anywhere? No. The Actor talks to a fast, direct HTTP API server-side — you just provide inputs and run it.

How am I billed? Pay-per-result: a fixed price per row returned, with no separate platform/compute charge. Caps like maxItems keep spend predictable.

Can I run it on a schedule or call it from my app? Yes — use Apify Schedules, the REST API, the JavaScript / Python clients, or the MCP server. See the API tab.

Is this affiliated with YouTube? No. It's an independent tool that collects publicly available data. Use it in line with the platform's terms and applicable law.

More YouTube scrapers by us

• YouTube Transcripts — Subtitles / transcripts for LLM datasets
• YouTube Channel Videos — All videos for a channel · stats
• YouTube Channel Info — Channel profile · subs · about
• YouTube Comments — Video comments + replies

Browse the full fleet → https://apify.com/ethereal_wool