YouTube Comments Scraper: Replies, Likes & Channels

Scrape YouTube comments and replies from any video, Short, playlist or whole channel. Get the comment text, author, likes, reply count, date, and whether the creator hearted or pinned it, as clean JSON, CSV or Excel.

No browser and no YouTube API key (so no 10,000-units-a-day quota). The Actor reads comments the same way the YouTube page does, which makes it fast and cheap, and residential proxies are included in the price.

What can you use it for?

• Audience research: learn what viewers ask for, complain about and love, in their own words.
• Sentiment & brand monitoring: track reactions to your videos, products or competitors.
• Content ideas: mine questions from comments for your next video, blog post or FAQ.
• AI & LLM pipelines: feed comments into classification, summarization or RAG.
• Influencer & campaign analysis: compare engagement across creators and videos.
• Lead and community discovery: find active commenters and channels in a niche.

Features

Inputs	Video URLs, IDs, Shorts, live replays, playlists, channels (@handle or URL)
Sorting	Top comments or newest first
Replies	Optional, each reply saved right after its parent, with parentCommentId
Per comment	Text, author handle, channel ID & URL, avatar, verified badge, channel-owner flag, likes, reply count, creator heart, pinned, edited, posted time (text + approximate date), direct comment link
Bulk	Many videos in parallel; for channels/playlists the latest N videos
Limits	Max comments per video, max replies per comment, max total cost per run

How to use

1. Paste videos, Shorts, playlists or channels into Videos, channels or playlists, one per line.
2. Set Max comments per video (0 = all) and the sort order.
3. Turn on Include replies if you need them.
4. Click Start, then download the results or use the API.

Input example

{
    "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk", "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd"],
    "maxComments": 200,
    "sort": "top",
    "includeReplies": true,
    "maxRepliesPerComment": 10,
    "maxVideosPerSource": 5
}

Output example

{
    "videoId": "aircAruvnKk",
    "videoTitle": "But what is a neural network? | Deep learning chapter 1",
    "commentId": "Ugwedfi--9yZVC0eefl4AaABAg",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk&lc=Ugwedfi--9yZVC0eefl4AaABAg",
    "text": "I study mathematics, physics and architecture. By definition this man is an ORACLE...",
    "author": "@kummer45",
    "authorChannelId": "UCqArZkt3NAOU0tcgIi6xmFQ",
    "authorIsVerified": false,
    "authorIsChannelOwner": false,
    "likes": 14000,
    "likesText": "14K",
    "replyCount": 176,
    "isPinned": false,
    "isHeartedByCreator": false,
    "isEdited": true,
    "publishedTimeText": "7 years ago",
    "publishedAt": "2019-10-30T06:28:30.808Z",
    "isReply": false,
    "parentCommentId": null,
    "status": "ok"
}

Videos with comments turned off (or private/removed) get one free row with status and the reason in error. A per-video summary is saved to the key-value store as SUMMARY.

Pricing

You pay per comment saved (replies count as comments). Status rows are free. Proxies and compute are included. Set a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

FAQ

Why are likes like 14000 instead of 14,231? YouTube only shows rounded like counts ("14K") for comments. likes is that number, and likesText is exactly what YouTube shows.

How exact is publishedAt? YouTube shows relative times ("7 years ago"), so publishedAt is an estimate. publishedTimeText is the original text.

Can I get all comments of a video? Yes, set Max comments per video to 0. Very large videos can have hundreds of thousands of comments, so set a maximum cost per run.

Can I call it from code or an AI agent? Yes, via the Apify API, the official JS/Python clients, or Apify's MCP server.