YouTube Channel Tracker — competitor growth, new uploads and breakout videos

Give it a list of YouTube channels. Get one report per channel: subscribers, posting pace, median views for long videos and Shorts, like rate, breakout videos and, on every repeat run, what changed since last time: subscriber growth, new uploads and the fastest-growing videos.

Schedule it daily or weekly and you have a competitor dashboard for your niche, with no API key and no login.

• Plain-English signals you can paste into Slack or a sheet: "Subscribers +12.4K (+0.62%) since 2026-09-24", "2 new uploads since 2026-09-24: "We're trying something new..."", "Breakout short: "What happens if you cut the green rope?" has 23.3x the channel's median views (48M)", "Posts about every 4.8 days", "Long videos outperform Shorts 3.1x on median views".
• Breakout detection: videos and Shorts with at least 3x the channel's median views, so you see which topics and formats are working for a competitor.
• Fastest growing since last run: views gained per video and per day between runs.
• Shorts vs long-form: separate medians, the Shorts share of recent uploads, and which format wins.
• Posting pace: uploads in the last 7 and 30 days, average days between uploads, days since the last upload.
• Pay per channel report, not per video. Use onlyChanged to skip, and not pay for, channels that posted nothing new.

Who uses this

• Creators: watch the channels in your niche, copy what breaks out, and time your uploads.
• Agencies and managers: one weekly report across every client and competitor channel.
• Brands and sponsors: vet creators by real median views and like rate, not subscriber counts.
• Analysts: track growth across a watchlist over time (each run is a dated snapshot).

Input

{
  "channels": ["@veritasium", "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd", "UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA"],
  "compareWithLastRun": true,
  "stateKey": "my-niche",
  "onlyChanged": false,
  "maxItems": 10
}

Channels can be an @handle, a channel URL (/@name, /channel/UC…, /c/name, /user/name) or a channel ID. The first run saves a baseline; every later run with the same stateKey compares against the previous one.

Output (one row per channel)

{
  "channel": "Veritasium",
  "handle": "@veritasium",
  "subscribers": 21300000,
  "videoCount": 537,
  "subscriberChange": 100000,
  "subscriberChangePct": 0.47,
  "newUploadsSinceLastRun": 1,
  "newUploads": [{ "title": "We're trying something new...", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONAuUyml0yI", "views": 564513, "published": "2026-09-30T19:19:10+00:00" }],
  "fastestGrowing": [{ "title": "The Closest Thing We Have to Alien Technology", "viewsGained": 1200000, "viewsPerDay": 400000 }],
  "uploadsLast7Days": 2,
  "uploadsLast30Days": 7,
  "avgDaysBetweenUploads": 4.8,
  "daysSinceLastUpload": 0,
  "medianVideoViews": 6392850,
  "medianShortViews": 2056801,
  "medianLikeRatePct": 2.7,
  "shortsShareOfRecentUploadsPct": 66.7,
  "breakouts": [{ "title": "What happens if you cut the green rope?", "type": "short", "views": 48000000, "timesMedian": 23.3 }],
  "recentVideos": ["…"],
  "recentShorts": ["…"],
  "signals": ["…"]
}

How the numbers work

• Data comes from each channel's public page, its Shorts tab and its public RSS feed, read at run time.
• The latest 15 uploads have exact publish dates, exact views and likes. Older videos have the rounded view counts YouTube shows (for example 6.4M) and approximate dates (publishedIsApprox).
• Medians use the last 10 videos or Shorts that are at least two days old, so a brand-new upload doesn't drag the median down.
• YouTube rounds subscriber counts for large channels (21.3M), so subscriber growth moves in steps.
• Upload counts come from the latest 15 uploads; uploadCountsCapped is true when a very active channel posted more than that.

Pricing

Pay per channel report. Channels that can't be found, and unchanged channels when onlyChanged is on, are free.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. It reads public pages that anyone can open without logging in.

Can it track my own channel? Yes. Add your channel and schedule the actor to get a daily growth log.

What about transcripts or comments? This actor is built for channel-level tracking. It does not download videos, transcripts or comments.