YouTube Video Info Scraper - Free Metadata Extractor (No API Key)

Extract complete YouTube video metadata at scale — no API key, no quotas, no login. Get titles, view counts, likes, comments, tags, descriptions, channel info, thumbnails, upload dates and more from any YouTube video URL in seconds.

What this YouTube Scraper does

This Apify actor pulls the full public metadata for any YouTube video you give it. Pass in a list of YouTube URLs and it returns a clean, structured JSON record for each one — ready to drop into Google Sheets, a database, a dashboard, or your own AI pipeline.

It works without the YouTube Data API, so you are not subject to the official 10,000 units / day quota. No API key. No OAuth. No paid tiers.

Fields returned per video

Field	Description
id	YouTube video ID
title	Video title
description	Full video description
tags	Tags array
categories	YouTube categories
view_count	Lifetime view count
like_count	Like count
comment_count	Comment count
upload_date	ISO date (YYYY-MM-DD)
duration	Duration in seconds
duration_string	Human-readable duration (e.g. "12:34")
thumbnail	Highest-resolution thumbnail URL
webpage_url	Canonical video URL
channel	Channel display name
channel_url	Channel page URL
channel_follower_count	Subscriber count
average_rating	Rating (when available)
age_limit	Age restriction (0 / 18)
platform	Source platform identifier

Why use this YouTube Video Scraper?

• No API key required — start scraping immediately
• No daily quota — extract from millions of videos
• Lightning fast — single HTTPS round-trip per video
• Production-ready output — clean JSON / CSV / Excel exports
• Supports Shorts and live streams — full URL coverage
• Bulk extraction — pass an array of URLs, get an array of results

Use cases

• Content research — analyze top-performing videos in your niche
• Competitor analysis — track competitor video stats over time
• SEO research — extract titles, tags, and descriptions for keyword ideas
• Influencer marketing — qualify creators by view count and engagement
• AI / ML training data — build datasets of video metadata
• Trend tracking — monitor viral videos, new uploads, news content
• Affiliate marketing — find high-traffic videos to target
• Data journalism — analyze public information from YouTube

Input

Pass an array of YouTube video URLs:

{
    "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
        "https://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0",
        "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/abc123"
    ]
}

Output

Each record in the dataset matches the field table above:

{
    "id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video)",
    "channel": "Rick Astley",
    "channel_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstleyYT",
    "view_count": 1543210000,
    "like_count": 16800000,
    "comment_count": 2400000,
    "upload_date": "2009-10-25",
    "duration": 213,
    "duration_string": "3:33",
    "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "tags": ["Rick Astley", "Music", "Pop"],
    "categories": ["Music"],
    "platform": "Youtube"
}

How it works

The actor uses yt-dlp under the hood — the gold-standard open-source video information extractor. yt-dlp queries YouTube's public web endpoints exactly the way a browser would, and parses the embedded player JSON. No reverse-engineered private APIs, no fragile DOM selectors.

Cost

This actor is small and fast. Memory usage stays under 256 MB and a single video extraction completes in 1–3 seconds. You only pay for the compute time you use — no per-video fees.

Related actors

• YouTube Channel Scraper — extract a channel's full video history
• YouTube Competitor Analyzer — compare up to 5 channels side-by-side
• YouTube Downloader — get downloadable MP4 / MP3 URLs

FAQ

Q: Do I need a YouTube Data API key? No. This actor works entirely without API credentials.

Q: Does it work on YouTube Shorts? Yes — Shorts URLs (youtube.com/shorts/...) are fully supported.

Q: Can it bypass age-restricted videos? Public metadata for age-restricted videos is returned, but the age_limit field will be 18.

Q: How fresh is the data? Data is extracted live, in real time, on each run.

Q: Is this legal? The actor extracts only publicly available metadata. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with YouTube's Terms of Service and your local laws.