YouTube Search Scraper

Search YouTube programmatically and extract structured data about videos and channels. This actor lets you query YouTube just like a user would, but returns clean, structured JSON data ready for analysis, monitoring, or integration into your workflows.

What is YouTube Search Scraper?

YouTube Search Scraper takes any search query and returns detailed information about the matching videos and channels found on YouTube. Unlike manual searching, you get machine-readable results with all metadata extracted and normalized, including view counts, channel verification status, video durations, and publication dates. Results can be localized by country and language, giving you the same geo-targeted results a user in that region would see.

What can this actor do?

• Search YouTube — Enter any search query and get back structured results
• Video results — Get video ID, title, description, URL, thumbnail, channel info, view count, duration, and publish date
• Channel results — Get channel ID, name, handle, subscriber count, video count, description, and verification status
• Localized results — Specify country and language codes to get region-specific search results
• Verified channel detection — Easily identify verified YouTube channels in results
• Configurable result count — Request up to 50 results per search

What data can you extract?

Video Results

Field	Description
type	Always "video" for video results
video_id	Unique YouTube video identifier
title	Video title
description	Video description snippet
url	Direct URL to the video
thumbnail_url	Video thumbnail image URL
channel_name	Name of the channel that uploaded the video
channel_id	Unique channel identifier
channel_handle	Channel handle (e.g. @username)
channel_verified	Whether the channel is verified
view_count	Number of views
view_count_text	Human-readable view count (e.g. "1.2M views")
duration_seconds	Video length in seconds
duration_text	Human-readable duration (e.g. "12:34")
published_at	Publication timestamp
published_text	Relative publish time (e.g. "3 days ago")

Channel Results

Field	Description
type	Always "channel" for channel results
channel_id	Unique channel identifier
channel_name	Channel display name
channel_handle	Channel handle (e.g. @username)
channel_verified	Whether the channel is verified
description	Channel description
subscriber_count	Number of subscribers
thumbnail_url	Channel avatar image URL
url	Direct URL to the channel
video_count	Total number of videos on the channel

Use Cases

• Competitor research — Monitor what content competitors are publishing and how it performs
• Content discovery — Find trending videos and popular channels in your niche
• Trend analysis — Track search results over time to identify emerging topics and creators
• Influencer discovery — Find YouTube creators by topic with subscriber and verification data
• Market research — Analyze video content landscape for any industry or keyword
• SEO monitoring — Track how videos rank for specific search terms

How to use

1. Enter your search query
2. Optionally set country and language codes for localized results
3. Set max results (default 20, up to 50)
4. Run the actor
5. Download results as JSON, CSV, or Excel

Input example

{
  "query": "machine learning tutorial for beginners",
  "maxResults": 30,
  "countryCode": "US",
  "languageCode": "en"
}

Output example

{
  "type": "video",
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Machine Learning in 10 Minutes",
  "description": "A beginner-friendly introduction to machine learning concepts...",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/hqdefault.jpg",
  "channel_name": "Tech Academy",
  "channel_id": "UC1234567890",
  "channel_handle": "@techacademy",
  "channel_verified": true,
  "view_count": 2450000,
  "view_count_text": "2.4M views",
  "duration_seconds": 612,
  "duration_text": "10:12",
  "published_at": "2024-11-15T10:00:00Z",
  "published_text": "3 months ago"
}

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• Actor start: Small fee per run
• Per result: Fee for each video or channel result returned

Platform usage costs are included — you only pay the per-event fees.

FAQ

What types of results are returned? YouTube search returns a mix of video and channel results. Each result includes a type field ("video" or "channel") so you can easily filter by type.

Can I get localized results? Yes. Set the countryCode and languageCode fields to get the same results a user in that region would see. For example, set countryCode to "JP" and languageCode to "ja" for Japanese results.

Can I use this with the Apify API? Yes! Call this actor via the Apify API or any Apify integration (Zapier, Make, etc.)

Need more features? Check out our other actors for influencer search, profile lookup, and more.