YouTube Channel RSS Scraper & New Video Monitor

Monitor recent uploads from multiple YouTube channels without a YouTube API key. This Actor resolves channel URLs and @handles, reads YouTube's public RSS feeds, and returns clean video records ready for alerts, dashboards, spreadsheets, and automation.

Why use this Actor?

• No YouTube API key or quota setup
• Monitor up to 1,000 channels in one run
• Output only new uploads across scheduled runs
• Filter by keywords, excluded terms, and publication age
• Fast HTTP-only execution with no browser overhead
• Export JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS through Apify

Quick start

{
  "channels": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium"
  ],
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 15,
  "publishedWithinDays": 30
}

The dataset contains one row per video with its title, channel, publication and update dates, description, thumbnail, views, rating count, matched keywords, and direct YouTube URL.

Monitor only new YouTube uploads

Turn on monitorNewOnly and choose a stable stateKey. The first run returns the current matching uploads and records their video IDs. Later runs using the same key return only videos that were not seen before.

{
  "channels": ["@mkbhd", "@LinusTechTips", "@veritasium"],
  "monitorNewOnly": true,
  "stateKey": "competitor-tech-channels",
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 15
}

Schedule that input daily or hourly and connect an Apify webhook to Slack, Make, Zapier, email, Google Sheets, or your own API.

Use a different stateKey for each independent monitor. State is kept in a named Apify key-value store so it survives separate Actor runs.

Filter uploads by topic

Search both video titles and descriptions using includeKeywords. A video is kept when at least one include keyword matches. excludeKeywords always remove matching videos.

{
  "channels": ["@Google", "@Microsoft", "@OpenAI"],
  "includeKeywords": ["AI", "Gemini", "Copilot", "GPT"],
  "excludeKeywords": ["livestream replay"],
  "publishedWithinDays": 14
}

Input fields

Field	Description
channels	YouTube channel URLs, @handles, or UC... channel IDs.
channelsText	Bulk list with one channel per line.
maxVideosPerChannel	Recent videos kept per channel, from 1 to 15.
publishedWithinDays	Keep videos no older than this; 0 disables the filter.
includeKeywords	Keep videos matching at least one term in title or description.
excludeKeywords	Remove videos matching any listed term.
monitorNewOnly	On later runs, output only unseen video IDs.
stateKey	Stable identifier for this monitor's persistent state.
maxChannels	Safety cap, up to 1,000 channels per run.
maxConcurrency	Parallel channel requests, from 1 to 10.
proxyConfiguration	Optional Apify Proxy settings for large repeated workloads.

Output example

{
  "videoId": "WOzcFkld6_g",
  "title": "The Most Interesting Displays In The World!",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOzcFkld6_g",
  "channelName": "Marques Brownlee",
  "channelId": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-16T18:17:15+00:00",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i4.ytimg.com/vi/WOzcFkld6_g/hqdefault.jpg",
  "viewCount": 3100000,
  "ratingCount": 92000,
  "matchedKeywords": [],
  "isNew": true
}

Practical use cases

• Competitor channel upload alerts
• Brand and product mention monitoring
• Creator and influencer watchlists
• Newsroom source monitoring
• YouTube content research
• Podcast and webinar episode tracking
• AI video discovery pipelines

Limits

YouTube's public channel RSS feed normally exposes the 15 most recent uploads. This Actor is optimized for fast recurring monitoring, not full historical channel scraping. View and rating numbers are snapshots supplied by the RSS feed and may lag behind the YouTube video page.

Use the data responsibly and follow YouTube's terms and applicable privacy and copyright rules.