YouTube Channel API — Channel Stats & Full Video List

Channel stats and the list of a channel's videos as one clean JSON record per channel: subscribers, video count, description, avatar, banner, keywords, verified badge and external links, plus the newest videos and shorts with views, publish dates, durations and thumbnails — for any @handle, channel URL or UC id. Built on the public channel page and the channel's public RSS feed: no YouTube API key, no quota, no login, nothing downloaded.

Try it in 1 minute:

1. Press Start — the prefilled input reads three public channels given three different ways (a URL, a handle and a channel id).
2. A few seconds later the Output tab shows one record per channel with its stats and its 30 newest videos.
3. Download JSON, CSV or Excel, or call the run from your code and read the dataset.

Price: $4.00 per 1,000 channels (one record = one channel with up to maxVideos videos). Channels that do not exist or cannot be read are free.

Use it to:

• Track subscriber and video counts of your channels and your competitors' on a schedule, in a spreadsheet or a dashboard.
• Pull a channel's latest uploads with views and durations to find what works in your niche.
• Feed an AI agent structured channel data — description, keywords, links, recent titles — instead of a screenshot of the page.
• Resolve handles and custom URLs to UC channel ids in bulk.
• Monitor a list of creators for new videos and shorts, without an API key or quota.

How it works

1. Every input is turned into the channel's /videos page (handles, /channel/UC..., /c/name, /user/name and bare ids all work; YouTube resolves the legacy forms itself). The page is requested in English (hl=en&gl=US) with a desktop browser User-Agent; its embedded ytInitialData gives the header (title, handle, subscribers, video count, avatar, banner, verified badge, links), the channel metadata (id, description, keywords) and the first ~30 videos with view counts, relative dates and durations.
2. When you ask for more than the first page, the page's own continuation token is followed through YouTube's public web browse endpoint (the key is read from the page, never hardcoded) until maxVideos.
3. The channel's public RSS feed adds exact publish timestamps and view counts for the latest 15 uploads; with includeShorts the Shorts tab is read too and its videos marked isShort: true.
4. Everything is merged by video id, newest first, and cut at maxVideos. Country, join date and lifetime views are filled in when YouTube put the About data in the page, else they are null.
5. The first request of every channel goes out directly (YouTube usually answers Apify's servers); retries go through the Apify proxy. A missing channel is a free NOT_FOUND record; a page without its data (for example a cookie-consent interstitial — no cookies are used) is retried through the Apify proxy and otherwise becomes a free FAILED record with the reason.

Input

Field	What it does
channels	Handles, channel URLs or UC ids, one per line. Required.
maxVideos	Newest videos to list per channel (default 30, up to 5,000; ~30 per extra request).
includeShorts	Also read the Shorts tab and flag shorts (default on).
proxyConfiguration	Apify proxy for retries (default on; the first request is direct).
maxConcurrency	Channels read in parallel (default 3).

Output

One record per channel:

Field	What it is
channelId, handle, title, description, url	Identity
subscribersText, subscribers	"320M subscribers" and 320000000
videoCountText, videoCount	"900 videos" and 900
viewCountText, totalViews, country, joinedDate	From the About data when it is in the page, else null
avatar, banner, keywords[], isVerified, links[]	Images, tags, verified badge (best effort), external links { title, url }
videos[]	{ id, title, url, publishedAt, publishedText, views, viewsText, duration, durationText, thumbnail, isShort }, newest first
videosCount	How many videos are in the record
input, status, error, warnings, scrapedAt	What you gave, why a channel gave nothing, and parts that could not be read

publishedAt is an exact ISO timestamp for the latest 15 uploads (from the feed); older videos carry YouTube's relative publishedText ("3 weeks ago"). views is exact where YouTube gives an exact count and rounded ("1.2M") otherwise.

Example

{
  "input": "@examplescience",
  "channelId": "UCexsci00000000000000011",
  "handle": "@examplescience",
  "title": "Example Science",
  "description": "Short science explainers, one experiment a week.",
  "subscribersText": "1.2M subscribers",
  "subscribers": 1200000,
  "videoCountText": "345 videos",
  "videoCount": 345,
  "viewCountText": null,
  "totalViews": null,
  "country": null,
  "avatar": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/example-avatar=s160",
  "banner": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/example-banner=w2120",
  "keywords": ["example science", "physics", "chemistry"],
  "isVerified": true,
  "joinedDate": null,
  "links": [{ "title": null, "url": "examplescience.org" }],
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/@examplescience",
  "videos": [
    { "id": "vid00000001", "title": "Why ice floats: the experiment nobody shows you", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vid00000001", "publishedAt": "2026-10-19T10:00:00.000Z", "publishedText": "1 hour ago", "views": 12, "viewsText": "12 views", "duration": 58, "durationText": "0:58", "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vid00000001/hq720.jpg", "isShort": false },
    { "id": "sho00000001", "title": "Can you boil water with ice?", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sho00000001", "publishedAt": "2026-10-18T15:30:00.000Z", "publishedText": null, "views": 501234, "viewsText": "501,234 views", "duration": null, "durationText": null, "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sho00000001/oar2.jpg", "isShort": true },
    { "id": "vid00000002", "title": "The physics of a bouncing ball, explained with a 1,000 fps camera", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vid00000002", "publishedAt": "2026-10-17T12:00:00.000Z", "publishedText": "2 days ago", "views": 1234567, "viewsText": "1,234,567 views", "duration": 754, "durationText": "12:34", "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vid00000002/hq720.jpg", "isShort": false }
  ],
  "videosCount": 3,
  "status": "OK",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-19T12:00:00.000Z"
}

FAQ

Is this an official API? No, it's an unofficial API built on public pages — the channel's public page and its public RSS feed, the same data anyone sees without signing in. No YouTube Data API key or quota is involved, and nothing is downloaded.

Why are totalViews, country and joinedDate often null? YouTube only shows them in the "About" panel, which is not always embedded in the channel page. When the page carries the About data they are filled in; otherwise they stay null rather than guessed.

Are the counts exact? Subscribers and video counts are what YouTube shows (rounded, e.g. "1.2M"). Views are exact for the latest 15 videos (from the feed) and wherever the page gives an exact number; otherwise they are YouTube's rounded figure, with the text kept in viewsText.

Can I get all videos of a channel? Yes: raise maxVideos (up to 5,000). Each extra page of about 30 videos is one more request, so a channel with 2,000 videos takes a little over a minute.

What about a cookie-consent page? No cookies are used, by design. The page is requested with hl=en&gl=US and a desktop browser identity, which normally avoids the interstitial; if a channel still comes back without its data, the run retries through the Apify proxy and otherwise reports a free FAILED record with the reason.

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