YouTube Comments Scraper - No API Key, Videos & Shorts

Export comments from any public YouTube video or Short to JSON, CSV or Excel. Get the comment text, author, likes, reply count, pinned and hearted flags, and a direct link to every comment. No YouTube Data API key, no quota, no login. $1 per 1,000 comments.

Real output from a default run of YouTube Comments Scraper in Apify Console.

What can YouTube Comments Scraper do?

• Scrape comments from many videos in one run: paste video URLs, Shorts URLs, youtu.be links, live URLs, or 11-character video IDs.
• Sort by Top comments or Newest first, just like on YouTube.
• Flag the comments that matter: pinned comments, comments hearted by the creator, and comments written by the channel owner.
• Link back to every comment with a commentUrl that opens the exact comment on YouTube.
• Control cost with a per-video cap and a total cap. Duplicates are removed automatically.
• Retry blocked requests through Apify Proxy automatically when YouTube returns 403, 429 or 5xx on the platform.

Use it for audience research, product and launch feedback, sentiment analysis, competitor monitoring, creator engagement audits, and training or grounding AI models on real viewer language.

What data can I extract from YouTube comments?

Field	Description
commentId, commentText	Comment ID and full text
authorName, authorChannelId, authorChannelUrl, authorAvatarUrl	Public author details
likeCount, likeCountText	Likes as a number and as shown on YouTube
replyCount, replyCountText	Number of replies to the comment
publishedTime	Relative time shown by YouTube, for example 2 days ago
isPinned, isHearted, isChannelOwner	Pinned, creator-hearted, written by the channel owner
videoId, videoUrl, commentUrl	Video and a direct link to the comment
sortBy, scrapedAt	Sort mode used and collection time

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube comments?

• $1.00 per 1,000 comments ($0.001 per comment saved)
• $0.00005 per Actor start (per GB of memory)

Job	Comments	Approx. cost
Top 100 comments from 10 videos	1,000	$1.00
500 newest comments from 1 launch video	500	$0.50
5,000 comments from one viral video	5,000	$5.00

Videos with comments turned off produce no rows and no comment charges. You can also set a maximum charge per run in Apify. Check the Pricing tab for current rates.

How to scrape YouTube comments

1. Paste one or more YouTube video or Shorts URLs into Video URLs.
2. Choose Sort by: TOP_COMMENTS for the most-liked discussion, NEWEST_FIRST for fresh feedback.
3. Set maxCommentsPerVideo and maxTotalComments.
4. Click Start and download the comments as CSV, Excel or JSON, or read them through the API.

Input example

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/abc123def45",
    "https://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0"
  ],
  "sortBy": "TOP_COMMENTS",
  "maxCommentsPerVideo": 200,
  "maxTotalComments": 600,
  "language": "en",
  "country": "US"
}

Output example

{
  "commentId": "UgzExampleCommentId4AaABAg",
  "commentText": "The battery section alone answered every question I had. Ordering one today.",
  "authorName": "@example_viewer",
  "authorChannelId": "UCexampleAuthor123456789",
  "authorChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCexampleAuthor123456789",
  "authorAvatarUrl": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/example=s88-c-k",
  "likeCount": 1200,
  "likeCountText": "1.2K",
  "replyCount": 34,
  "replyCountText": "34",
  "publishedTime": "3 days ago",
  "isPinned": false,
  "isHearted": true,
  "isChannelOwner": false,
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "commentUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&lc=UgzExampleCommentId4AaABAg",
  "sortBy": "TOP_COMMENTS",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-25T12:54:51.032Z"
}

Input reference

Field	Default	Notes
videoUrls	[]	Video, Shorts, live or youtu.be URLs, or video IDs
maxCommentsPerVideo	100	Up to 5,000 per video
maxTotalComments	100	Up to 20,000 per run
sortBy	TOP_COMMENTS	TOP_COMMENTS or NEWEST_FIRST
language / country	en / US	Locale used for requests
dedupe	true	Skip repeated comment IDs

YouTube comments for sentiment analysis and AI

The dataset is ready for spreadsheets, BI tools and LLM pipelines: one row per comment, plain text, numeric likes. Common workflows:

• Launch feedback: run NEWEST_FIRST on your launch video daily and pipe new comments to a sentiment model.
• Competitor research: scrape the top comments on competitors' reviews to find feature requests and complaints.
• Creator vetting: check engagement quality and how often a creator replies or hearts comments (isHearted, isChannelOwner).

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("groupoject/youtube-comments-scraper-api").call(run_input={
    "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"],
    "maxCommentsPerVideo": 300,
    "maxTotalComments": 300,
})
comments = list(client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items())
print(len(comments), "comments")

You can also call it from Make, Zapier or n8n through the Apify integration, or from AI agents through MCP: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=groupoject/youtube-comments-scraper-api.

Each run writes a SUMMARY record (videos, comments, failures) and an ERRORS record. If every requested video fails, the run is marked as failed instead of returning an empty success.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. There is no API key, no OAuth, and no daily quota.

Does it scrape YouTube Shorts comments? Yes. Paste the Shorts URL (youtube.com/shorts/...) like any other video.

Are replies included? This Actor exports top-level comments with their replyCount. The text of individual replies is not exported.

Why did a video return no comments? Comments may be disabled, the video may be private, age-restricted or removed, or YouTube may have limited the request. Check the ERRORS record.

Why is publishedTime relative? YouTube shows comment times as "3 days ago". The Actor keeps that value exactly as shown and adds scrapedAt so you can approximate the date.

Is it legal to scrape YouTube comments? Comments are public, but they contain personal data such as usernames. Use the data in line with YouTube's terms and privacy laws like GDPR.

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