YouTube Comments Scraper API - No API Key

Scrape public YouTube comments from video URLs without a YouTube API key.

This Actor is built for social listening, sentiment research, creator analytics, audience research, comment mining, competitor monitoring, and brand tracking.

Features

• Scrape comments from YouTube video URLs, Shorts URLs, and video IDs
• Export comment text, author, likes, reply counts, pinned status, hearted status, and timestamps
• Supports top comments and newest-first sorting
• No YouTube API key required
• Clean dataset for CSV, JSON, Excel, Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, APIs, and AI workflows

Input Example

{
  "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"],
  "maxCommentsPerVideo": 100,
  "maxTotalComments": 100,
  "sortBy": "TOP_COMMENTS"
}

Output Example

{
  "commentId": "Ugzge340dBgB75hWBm54AaABAg",
  "commentText": "can confirm: he never gave us up",
  "authorName": "@YouTube",
  "likeCount": 308000,
  "replyCount": 963,
  "publishedTime": "1 year ago",
  "isPinned": true,
  "isHearted": true,
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
}

Use Cases

• Monitor comments on competitor videos
• Analyze audience feedback on product launches
• Collect comments for sentiment and topic analysis
• Track creator engagement and pinned comments
• Build datasets for YouTube social listening
• Export YouTube comments for research or moderation workflows

Notes

This Actor uses publicly available YouTube surfaces and an unofficial InnerTube client. Some videos have comments disabled, hidden, or restricted; those videos are reported in the ERRORS key-value record.

Input reference

Field	Purpose
videoUrls	YouTube watch URLs, Shorts URLs, or 11-character video IDs
maxCommentsPerVideo	Per-video comment limit, up to 5,000
maxTotalComments	Run-wide output limit, up to 20,000
sortBy	Collect top comments or newest comments first
language, country	YouTube locale used for the request
dedupe	Remove repeated comment IDs across inputs

Run through the API

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/groupoject~youtube-comments-scraper-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"videoUrls":["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"],"maxTotalComments":100}'

const run = await client.actor('groupoject/youtube-comments-scraper-api').call({
  videoUrls: ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ'],
  maxCommentsPerVideo: 250,
  sortBy: 'NEWEST_FIRST',
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Practical workflows

Product feedback analysis

Collect comments from launch videos, reviews, and tutorials. Export comment text, likes, replies, and timestamps to a spreadsheet or sentiment-analysis pipeline.

Creator and competitor monitoring

Schedule newest-first runs for a stable list of videos. Use the dataset in dashboards, alerts, or AI workflows to identify recurring questions and audience reactions.

High-signal comment research

Use TOP_COMMENTS to prioritize visible, highly engaged discussions. Compare likeCount, replyCount, pinned status, and creator hearts.

FAQ

Is a YouTube Data API key required?

No. The Actor reads public YouTube data without requiring a Google Cloud project or API quota.

Are replies included?

The output includes the visible reply count for each top-level comment. It does not currently emit every nested reply as a separate dataset row.

Why can a video return no comments?

Comments may be disabled, restricted, unavailable by region, or hidden from the public surface. Review the ERRORS record for input-specific diagnostics.

Only collect public data and use it in accordance with applicable laws and YouTube's terms.

Pricing and billing

Base result price checked September 14, 2026: $1.00 per 1,000 dataset items ($0.001 each). 100 result items cost $0.10 in result fees.

The separate Actor start event is $0.00005 per billable start unit, with one unit per GB of configured memory and a minimum of one. It applies even when a run returns no results.

A result event corresponds to one item saved in the default dataset, not one HTTP request or one input URL.

The live Pricing tab is authoritative for current rates, tier discounts and any separately charged usage. Set a maximum run charge and inspect a small sample before scaling. Charges from an external provider, where used, are not controlled by the Apify run-charge limit.