YouTube Channel Video Explorer

Extract normalized video metadata from public YouTube channels and handles: title, URL, views, publish age, duration, and thumbnails. Continuation paging supports deterministic per-channel limits without a buyer API key.

Input and output

Provide channel URLs, handles, or UC... channel IDs in channels. Set maxVideosPerChannel from 1 to 500. The default input returns a few recent Apify channel videos.

Successful dataset rows contain normalized channel and video IDs, canonical URLs, counts, duration, publish text, thumbnails, and extraction time. Failed channel resolutions are explicit, uncharged rows.

Quick start

{
  "channels": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@Apify/videos"
  ],
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 10,
  "includeThumbnails": true
}

Inputs may be public channel URLs, @handles, or UC... channel IDs. Use a small limit for monitoring and increase it for one-time research exports.

Common workflows

• Monitor a competitor or creator's recent uploads.
• Build a content-research dataset with canonical video URLs and metadata.
• Feed new-video rows into an n8n or Make workflow.
• Join channel metadata with transcript extraction for an AI or RAG pipeline.
• Track publishing cadence and visible engagement without maintaining YouTube API credentials.

API and automation

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/gifted_wagon~youtube-channel-video-explorer/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"channels":["https://www.youtube.com/@Apify/videos"],"maxVideosPerChannel":5}'

For recurring monitoring, save the input as an Apify task and schedule it. Deduplicate downstream records by videoId.

Pricing

The primary video-extracted event starts at $0.0009 per successful video. Only successful video rows are charged; failed channels and the OUTPUT summary are uncharged. A small Actor-start event covers startup.

Responsible use

Collect only public metadata for a lawful purpose and respect platform terms, privacy, copyright, and rate limits. This Actor does not access private channel data. YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC; this independent Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube.

FAQ and limitations

• Is a YouTube Data API key required? No.
• Does it return transcripts? Use YouTube Transcript Extractor Pro for captions and timed text.
• Can it access private or members-only videos? No.
• Can public YouTube markup change? Yes. Explicit failure rows make upstream changes visible instead of silently dropping channels.