YouTube Scraper: Search, Videos, Channels & Playlists

Scrape YouTube search results, channels, playlists and videos in one Actor. Get title, views, likes, publish date, duration, channel, subscribers, description and more, as clean JSON, CSV or Excel.

No browser and no YouTube API key (no daily quota). The Actor reads YouTube the same way the website does, so it is fast and cheap, and proxies are included in the price.

What can you use it for?

• Keyword & niche research: see which videos rank for a search term, and how many views they get.
• Competitor tracking: pull every new video from competitor channels on a schedule.
• Trend spotting: search with "Upload date: today" and sort by views to catch what is taking off.
• Influencer discovery: find channels covering a topic, with subscriber counts.
• Datasets for AI: titles, descriptions and stats for classification, RAG or fine-tuning.
• Reporting: export views and likes to Google Sheets, Looker Studio or your BI tool.

Features

Search	Any search term, sorted by relevance, upload date, views or rating
Search filters	Upload date (hour, today, week, month, year) and duration (under 4 min, 4-20 min, over 20 min)
Channels	Latest videos of any channel (URL, @handle or ID)
Playlists	Every video of a playlist
Videos	Video URLs or IDs, with full details
Full details (optional for search/channels)	Exact view count, exact likes, publish date, full description, hashtags, channel subscribers
Always included	Title, URL, channel name/ID/URL, verified badge, views, duration, published time, description snippet, live flag, badges (4K, CC...), thumbnail, search rank

How to use

1. Add search terms and/or video, channel or playlist URLs.
2. Set how many results you want and, for search, the sort order and filters.
3. Turn on Full details for every video if you need exact likes, publish dates and full descriptions for search and channel results.
4. Click Start and download your data, or use the API.

Input example

{
    "searchQueries": ["claude ai tutorial", "best budget phone 2026"],
    "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"],
    "maxResultsPerQuery": 100,
    "sortBy": "views",
    "uploadDate": "month",
    "includeDetails": true
}

Output example

{
    "videoId": "aircAruvnKk",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk",
    "title": "But what is a neural network? | Deep learning chapter 1",
    "channelName": "3Blue1Brown",
    "channelId": "UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown",
    "channelSubscribers": 8730000,
    "viewCount": 25037081,
    "likes": 568368,
    "durationText": "18:40",
    "durationSeconds": 1120,
    "publishDate": "2017-10-05",
    "publishedTimeText": "9 years ago",
    "description": "What are the neurons, why are there layers, and what is the math underlying it?...",
    "isLive": false,
    "badges": ["CC"],
    "searchQuery": "neural networks explained",
    "rank": 1,
    "status": "ok"
}

Pricing

You pay per video saved. Proxies and compute are included. Set a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

FAQ

How many results can one search return? As many as YouTube shows when you keep scrolling, usually several hundred per search term. Use several related search terms to collect more.

Why do some rows have no likes or publishDate? Search and channel results show rounded views and relative dates ("2 weeks ago"). Turn on Full details for every video to get exact likes, views and the publish date.

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. There is no quota to worry about.

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.

Related Actors: YouTube Transcript Scraper, YouTube Comments Scraper, YouTube Channel Scraper and YouTube Shorts Scraper by the same author.