YouTube Competitor Analyzer - Compare Channels Side-by-Side

Compare up to 5 YouTube channels in a single run. See subscriber counts, top-performing videos, posting cadence, and average views — perfect for competitor research, influencer due diligence, and content strategy.

What this YouTube Competitor Analyzer does

Pass 1–5 YouTube channel URLs and the actor:

1. Pulls each channel's metadata in parallel (subscribers, total views, video count, description)
2. Extracts the latest N videos from each channel (configurable, default 30)
3. Identifies each channel's top 3 most-viewed, latest 3, and oldest 3 videos in the fetched window
4. Returns a single comparison record + per-channel records for easy filtering

The output drops straight into Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, or your BI tool — ready for charts and side-by-side dashboards.

Why use this YouTube Competitor Analyzer?

• No YouTube Data API key — the official API caps you at 10,000 units/day
• Up to 5 channels in a single run — perfect for category benchmarking
• Pre-sorted highlights — top, latest, oldest delivered ready to chart
• Predictable cost — analyses complete in 30–60 seconds for 5 channels at 30 videos each
• Resilient input — accepts handles, channel IDs, custom URLs, or video URLs

Use cases

• Competitor benchmarking — compare your channel against 4 rivals in your niche
• Influencer due diligence — qualify creators before sponsoring or partnering
• Content gap analysis — see what video formats your competitors crush at
• Niche research — identify which channels are growing fastest in a category
• Pitch decks & reports — generate clean comparison tables in minutes

Input

{
    "channelUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast",
        "https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRober",
        "https://www.youtube.com/@VeritasiumYT"
    ],
    "maxVideos": 30
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
channelUrls	array of 1-5 strings	required	Channel URLs to compare
maxVideos	integer	30	Videos to consider per channel (5–500)

Output

The first dataset item is the full comparison object:

{
    "channels": [
        {
            "channel_name": "MrBeast",
            "subscriber_count": 250000000,
            "view_count": 50000000000,
            "video_count": 800,
            "videos_fetched": 30,
            "top_viewed": [ /* top 3 most-viewed in fetched window */ ],
            "latest_videos": [ /* most recent 3 uploads */ ],
            "oldest_videos": [ /* oldest 3 in window — useful for posting-cadence math */ ],
            "all_videos": [ /* … */ ]
        },
        { /* next channel */ }
    ]
}

Each subsequent dataset item is a single-channel record (one per competitor) — the same shape returned by the standalone YouTube Channel Scraper.

How it works

The actor uses yt-dlp with extract_flat='in_playlist' and runs all channel pulls concurrently with asyncio.gather. No Playwright, no API tokens, no rate limits.

Related actors

• YouTube Channel Scraper — single-channel deep dive
• YouTube Video Info Scraper — full per-video metadata
• YouTube Downloader — downloadable MP4 / MP3 URLs

FAQ

Q: Can I compare more than 5 channels? The actor caps at 5 to keep runtimes predictable. Run multiple jobs and combine the datasets if you need more.

Q: Is the data live? Yes — every run hits YouTube fresh. There is no staleness window.

Q: Does it handle very large channels (1M+ videos)? Set maxVideos to whatever window you actually need (e.g. last 100). The actor's runtime scales linearly with this value.