YouTube Video Scraper

🤖 What does YouTube Video Scraper do?

YouTube Video Scraper enables you to extract comprehensive metadata and media details from any YouTube resource—channels, playlists, search results pages, or individual video URLs. It retrieves:

• Video Details – ID, title, length, complete description, keywords, author, view count, like count, publish/upload dates, and more
• Captions – Auto-generated and manual subtitle tracks, with track URLs and language codes
• Microformat Data – Thumbnails, embed settings (iframe URL, dimensions), category, family-safe flag, and availability by country
• Owner & Channel Info – Channel ID, channel name, external channel URL
• Thumbnail URLs – Multiple sizes of thumbnails (hqdefault, maxresdefault, etc.)
• Embed & Playback Links – Direct embed URL for iframe usage

This scraper gives you structured JSON output, ready for analytics, archiving, or feeding into downstream pipelines.

💡 Why scrape YouTube videos?

YouTube hosts over 2 billion monthly logged-in users and immense volumes of video content. Scraping YouTube videos lets you:

• Perform Content Analysis: Gather titles, descriptions, transcripts, and tags for NLP or sentiment analysis
• Track Channel Performance: Monitor upload frequency, view/like growth, and emerging keywords
• Build Datasets: Aggregate structured metadata across thousands of videos for research or machine learning
• Automate Reporting: Generate periodic reports on trending videos in a niche or competitor channels
• Enable Multimedia Applications: Preload thumbnails, embed links, or captions for custom apps or dashboards

🚀 How to scrape YouTube videos

1. Configure Your Input:

   • Max Items: Specify how many videos to scrape (e.g., the latest 20 uploads in a playlist)
   • URLs: Provide one or more YouTube URLs (channel, playlist, search page, or video link)
   • Proxy Configuration: (Optional) Choose to route requests through Apify Proxy for reliability

2. Run the Actor:

   • Click Run in the Apify Console or invoke via API/CLI

3. Access & Use Your Data:

   • Once finished, open the Dataset tab to preview, filter, or download your JSON results

📝 Input Parameters

The scraper supports the following parameters:

Parameter	Type	Required	Description	Default
maxItems	Integer	Yes	Maximum number of videos to scrape. Must be ≥ 1.	10
urls	Array of Strings	Yes	One or more YouTube URLs (channel, playlist, search results, or video) to scrape videos from.	["https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=apify"]
proxyConfiguration	Object	No	Proxy settings to control how requests are routed. Use Apify Proxy for better success rates.	{ useApifyProxy: true, apifyProxyGroups: ["RESIDENTIAL"] }

Example input:

{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=apify",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@Apify"
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

---

📊 Results

Example output snippet:

[
  {
    "captions": {
      "playerCaptionsTracklistRenderer": {
        "captionTracks": [
          {
            "baseUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/api/timedtext?v=OdJeXVrcpus\u0026ei=dhZfaLWMAtGI9fgPvqSqsQw\u0026caps=asr\u0026opi=112496729\u0026xoaf=5\u0026hl=en\u0026ip=0.0.0.0\u0026ipbits=0\u0026expire=1751087334\u0026sparams=ip,ipbits,expire,v,ei,caps,opi,xoaf\u0026signature=0202C1542C59E69ECCE734088A8C4F00185EC38D.2B9688A51D7A7DF6E38D65A728657F0C01360AAE\u0026key=yt8\u0026kind=asr\u0026lang=en\u0026variant=punctuated",
            "name": {
              "simpleText": "English (auto-generated)"
            },
            "vssId": "a.en",
            "languageCode": "en",
            "kind": "asr",
            "isTranslatable": true,
            "trackName": ""
          }
        ],
        "audioTracks": [
          {
            "captionTrackIndices": [0],
            "audioTrackId": "fr-FR.10"
          },
          {
            "captionTrackIndices": [0],
            "audioTrackId": "es-US.10"
          }
        ],
        "translationLanguages": [
          {
            "languageCode": "es",
            "languageName": {
              "simpleText": "Spanish"
            }
          },
          {
            "languageCode": "fr",
            "languageName": {
              "simpleText": "French"
            }
          }
        ],
        "defaultAudioTrackIndex": 8
      }
    },
    "microformat": {
      "playerMicroformatRenderer": {
        "thumbnail": {
          "thumbnails": [
            {
              "url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OdJeXVrcpus/maxresdefault.jpg",
              "width": 1280,
              "height": 720
            }
          ]
        },
        "embed": {
          "iframeUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/embed/OdJeXVrcpus",
          "width": 1280,
          "height": 720
        },
        "title": {
          "simpleText": "How to Scrape (almost) ANYTHING in Seconds | Apify's New MCP Server"
        },
        "description": {
          "simpleText": "What if you could instantly transform any AI language model—OpenAI’s GPT, Claude, or your favorite LLM—into a powerful, automated web-scraping engine without writing a single line of scraper code? In this comprehensive guide, we’ll unlock the full potential of Apify’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, demonstrating step-by-step how to install and configure it effortlessly using CLI or simple JSON setups."
        },
        "lengthSeconds": "780",
        "ownerProfileUrl": "http://www.youtube.com/@Mark_Kashef",
        "externalChannelId": "UCHkzp52CldSPZqU5T49mOnA",
        "isFamilySafe": true,
        "availableCountries": ["ES", "US"],
        "isUnlisted": false,
        "hasYpcMetadata": false,
        "viewCount": "12839",
        "category": "Education",
        "publishDate": "2025-06-21T12:27:16-07:00",
        "ownerChannelName": "Mark Kashef",
        "uploadDate": "2025-06-21T12:27:16-07:00",
        "isShortsEligible": false,
        "externalVideoId": "OdJeXVrcpus",
        "likeCount": "416",
        "canonicalUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdJeXVrcpus"
      }
    },
    "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OdJeXVrcpus/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "videoDetails": {
      "videoId": "OdJeXVrcpus",
      "title": "How to Scrape (almost) ANYTHING in Seconds | Apify's New MCP Server",
      "lengthSeconds": "779",
      "keywords": [
        "AI web scraping",
        "Apify MCP",
        "Apify tutorial",
        "Apify Model Context Protocol",
        "web scraping with GPT"
      ],
      "channelId": "UCHkzp52CldSPZqU5T49mOnA",
      "isOwnerViewing": false,
      "shortDescription": "What if you could instantly transform any AI language model—OpenAI’s GPT, Claude, or your favorite LLM—into a powerful, automated web-scraping engine without writing a single line of scraper code? In this comprehensive guide, we’ll unlock the full potential of Apify’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, demonstrating step-by-step how to install and configure it effortlessly using CLI or simple JSON setups.",
      "isCrawlable": true,
      "thumbnail": {
        "thumbnails": [
          {
            "url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OdJeXVrcpus/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEiCKgBEF5IWvKriqkDFQgBFQAAAAAYASUAAMhCPQCAokN4AQ==\u0026rs=AOn4CLDDSr45VpYEi9fF4dPNtQJJCJJ2eA",
            "width": 168,
            "height": 94
          },
          {
            "url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OdJeXVrcpus/maxresdefault.jpg",
            "width": 1920,
            "height": 1080
          }
        ]
      },
      "allowRatings": true,
      "viewCount": "12839",
      "author": "Mark Kashef",
      "isPrivate": false,
      "isUnpluggedCorpus": false,
      "isLiveContent": false
    }
  }
]

🌍 Proxy Usage

To ensure high success rates and minimize detection risks, YouTube Video Scraper leverages Apify's proxy infrastructure:

• Geo-distributed Access: Scrape region-locked or localized content.
• Reliability: Reduced request failures and IP blocks during high-volume runs.
• Configurability: Easily switch between "RESIDENTIAL" and "DATACENTER" groups.

⚖️ Legal Considerations

When using YouTube Video Scraper, please keep in mind:

• YouTube's Terms of Service: Ensure your use case complies with YouTube's policies.
• Respect Rate Limits: Configure maxItems reasonably to avoid overwhelming YouTube's servers.
• Data Privacy Laws: If you're processing personal data, ensure GDPR or other regulations compliance.
• Consult Legal Advice: When in doubt about data usage rights or redistribution, seek professional guidance.

For more on web scraping legality, see our blog post: Is web scraping legal?