YouTube Comments Pain Point & Buyer Intent Finder

Turn public YouTube comments into a structured product-research report. Start with competitor videos, channels or search keywords and analyze up to 10,000 comments per run. Find complaints, questions, feature requests, competitor mentions, purchase intent, alternative requests and product problems, with original quotes and source links.

Built for Amazon sellers, SaaS founders, marketing agencies, product managers and YouTubers researching what an audience needs.

Quick start

1. Enter YouTube video/channel URLs or search keywords.
2. Set the global comment and video limits. Start with 100 comments and one video to preview the output.
3. Optionally enter competitor names for brand matching.
4. Run the Actor. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or open the Opportunity report (JSON) output.

{
  "keywords": ["wireless headphones review"],
  "maxVideos": 3,
  "maxComments": 1000,
  "competitors": ["Sony", "Bose", "Apple"],
  "maxUpstreamCostUsd": 5
}

Video URLs and keyword searches can be combined. Direct video URLs are prioritized, followed by channel discovery and keyword discovery. Comments are collected in video order, so the first video can fill the entire limit. This is not a balanced sample across channels. Collection stops at the global limit or source budget. Disabled comments, limited access and low-volume videos can return fewer comments.

What you get

The default dataset contains three row types (recordType):

Type	Contents
summary	Actual analyzed count, category totals, duplicates removed, source run IDs, warnings and limitations
opportunity	Theme, suggested improvement, comment count, score, category breakdown and up to five original quotes
comment	Original text, video and available comment links, likes, multiple signal labels and themes

The REPORT key-value-store record provides the summary and ranked opportunities without individual comment rows. Set includeComments to false for a compact dataset. Category and theme counts overlap: one comment may be a question, an alternative request, and a pricing signal at the same time.

Seven signal categories

Signal	Example
Complaints	“This is too expensive.”
Questions	“Does this work with Android?”
Feature requests	“Please add offline support.”
Competitor mentions	“I prefer Notion.” — when Notion is supplied
Purchase intent	“Where can I buy this?”
Alternative requests	“Is there a cheaper alternative?”
Product problems	“Battery dies too quickly.”

Analysis method and scores

This version uses transparent English and Turkish rules, not an LLM. It does not require an AI API key. Nine predefined themes cover battery/charging, price, compatibility, reliability, speed, usability, support, quality and privacy. Other signals are grouped for manual review. Competitor mentions require user-supplied names; the Actor does not infer brands automatically.

The Pain Point Score (0–100) is a research prioritization heuristic:

40 × theme share of all analyzed comments + 30 × complaint share within theme + 20 × buying/alternative share within theme + 10 × min(1, log10(1 + theme comment count) / 3)

Scores use actual counts, are rounded to integers, and are not a purchase probability or proof of market demand. Example quotes are selected by likes. Suggested opportunities are fixed recommendations for each theme, not generated market forecasts. Sarcasm, complex negation, context and unsupported languages can lead to false positives or missed signals. Inspect the quotes before making decisions.

Deduplication uses comment ID when available, otherwise normalized text within a video. Equal text with different IDs is retained because distinct commenters can express the same need. YouTube ranking and source availability affect the sample; results do not represent all customers.

Pricing and permissions

This Actor charges $0.25 per completed analysis report, covering up to 10,000 comments. The report is saved before its charge event. No report event is charged when collection or analysis fails before the report is produced.

Live collection has additional costs. It calls YouTube Scraper for channel/keyword discovery and YouTube Comments Scraper for comments. Those Actors charge your Apify account separately at their current rates, plus applicable platform usage. maxUpstreamCostUsd defaults to $5 for source runs; it is separate from this Actor's fee. This is a source-spending guard, not a guarantee of collecting 10,000 comments for $5. Check source pricing before large runs.

The Actor requires full Actor permissions to start source runs and read their datasets. It uses the runtime's Apify token; never put your token in the input. Imported comments skip source Actors and their fees. No YouTube or AI API key is required.

This Actor's own platform usage is included in the report fee. Discovery runs are individually capped at $0.50 within your source budget. If a source's billing has not settled, its budget is reserved conservatively and upstreamCostUsd is null; the source run's Billing tab shows final charges. This may stop collection early. Account concurrency limits are retried for up to five minutes.

Import your existing comments

Clear the prefilled source URL before using import mode. Do not combine imports and live sources.

{
  "comments": [
    {"id":"example-1","text":"Battery dies too quickly.","likes":12},
    {"id":"example-2","text":"Is there a cheaper alternative?","likes":4},
    {"id":"example-3","text":"Does this work with Android?","likes":2}
  ],
  "maxComments": 10000
}

These are illustrative comments, not measured research. Imported objects accept text (or comment/commentText), optional id, videoUrl, commentUrl, likes and publishedAt.

Troubleshooting

• No comments collected: check that comments are enabled, try another video, and inspect linked source runs. Empty live results fail explicitly.
• Fewer comments than requested: increase source budget or videos; requested limits are maxima, not promised counts.
• Permission or source payment error: grant the documented Actor permissions and ensure your account can run both paid source Actors.
• Few detected signals: the audience may not discuss product issues, or comments may use unsupported languages or wording. Unclassified comments remain in the export.

Only public comments are collected. The Actor omits commenter profile fields from its output. Use the data responsibly and comply with applicable platform terms. For bugs, open an issue on this Actor with a run ID and a non-sensitive sample.