YouTube Comments Scraper — Extract Comments & Replies

Scrape YouTube comments and replies at scale — no API key, no quotas, no code.

The YouTube Comments Scraper extracts every comment and nested reply from any YouTube video or Short, enriches each one with complete author and video metadata, and exports the results to JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML in a couple of clicks.

It's built for audience research, sentiment analysis, creator analytics, brand monitoring, and market intelligence — turning public YouTube discussions into clean, structured datasets you can analyze immediately.

✅ Unlimited comments
✅ Full reply threads
✅ Videos & Shorts
✅ Works on geo‑restricted videos
✅ Rich author + video data
✅ No YouTube Data API required

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🔎 What is the YouTube Comments Scraper?

The YouTube Comments Scraper is a ready‑to‑use YouTube comment extractor that downloads comments and replies from any public video or Short and delivers them as a structured dataset. Instead of wrestling with the YouTube Data API — OAuth setup, API keys, and daily quota limits — you simply paste a URL and export clean, analysis‑ready data.

Whether you're a marketer measuring sentiment, a data scientist building an NLP dataset, a creator studying your audience, or an analyst tracking competitors, this tool gives you the raw voice of the audience in seconds.

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🚀 What this Actor does

YouTube hides its comment data behind a rate‑limited official API with strict quotas and OAuth setup. This Actor gives you the same data — and more — without an API key, developer account, or a single line of code:

• Collects all top‑level comments and complete reply threads from any public video or Short.
• Adds author details (channel ID, channel URL, avatar, verified & creator badges) to every comment.
• Attaches full video metadata (title, channel, views, likes, publish date, duration, category, tags, description, thumbnail) to every row — no extra lookups or joins.
• Streams results in real time to your dataset as it scrapes, so you can start working before the run finishes.
• Exports to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML, or pull data via the Apify API and integrations (Zapier, Make, Google Sheets, n8n, and more).

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✨ Key features

• 🔁 Full reply extraction — captures entire nested reply chains, not just the first page.
• 🌍 Geo‑restriction handling — automatically manages region‑locked videos to return data.
• 👤 Rich author data — channel ID, channel URL, avatar, verified and creator flags for every commenter.
• 🎥 Video context on every row — denormalized video stats make the dataset ready for analysis without joins.
• ⚡ Fast & concurrent — asynchronous engine scrapes multiple videos and reply threads in parallel.
• 📡 Real‑time streaming — results appear in your dataset as they're collected.
• 🔀 Flexible sorting — choose Newest first or Top (most relevant) comments.
• 🎯 Precise limits — cap comments per video, or scrape everything.
• 🛡️ Resilient — automatic retries with backoff handle transient errors and rate limits.
• 🧱 Clean, structured output — consistent schema, ready for spreadsheets, BI tools, or databases.

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💡 Use cases

• Audience & sentiment analysis — understand how viewers react to a video, product, or campaign.
• Creator & competitor analytics — benchmark engagement and study what resonates with an audience.
• Brand & reputation monitoring — track mentions, feedback, and complaints across YouTube.
• Market & product research — mine real customer language, feature requests, and objections.
• Lead & community insights — identify active, influential commenters in your niche.
• Academic & data science — build labeled datasets for NLP, toxicity, or trend research.
• Content strategy — discover FAQs and content ideas straight from your viewers.

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⚙️ How to scrape YouTube comments (step by step)

1. Click Try for free / Start.
2. Paste one or more YouTube video or Shorts URLs (up to 20).
3. (Optional) Choose a sort order (Newest or Top), toggle Include replies, and set a max comments per video limit — or enable Scrape all comments for no limit.
4. Click Save & Start.
5. Watch results stream into the Output tab in real time.
6. Export to JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML — or fetch them via the Apify API.

No proxies to configure, no API keys to manage — it just works.

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📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
video_urls	string[]	✅ Yes	–	1–20 YouTube URLs (videos, Shorts, youtu.be, mobile links)
sort_type	string	❌ No	Newest	Sort order for every video: Newest or Top
includeReplies	boolean	❌ No	true	Scrape replies too. Set false for top‑level comments only
scrape_all_comments	boolean	❌ No	false	Collect every comment and reply, ignoring max_comments
max_comments	number	❌ No	100	Max comments (incl. replies) per video. Used only when scrape_all_comments is false

Example input

{
  "video_urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/abc123def45"
  ],
  "sort_type": "Newest",
  "includeReplies": true,
  "max_comments": 1000
}

Supported URL formats

• Standard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• Short link: https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID
• Shorts: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID
• Mobile: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID

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📤 Output

Each dataset item is a single comment or reply, enriched with author and video details. Results stream in real time and can be exported to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML.

Example output

{
  "comment_id": "Ugy6QKJ3KJUe-",
  "text": "This is the main comment text",
  "author": "Jane Doe",
  "author_channel_id": "UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "author_channel_url": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "author_avatar": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/.../s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
  "author_is_verified": false,
  "author_is_creator": false,
  "likes": 1247,
  "published": "2 weeks ago",
  "reply_level": 0,
  "replies_count": 3,
  "is_reply": false,
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "video_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "video_title": "Never Gonna Give You Up",
  "channel_name": "Rick Astley",
  "channel_id": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "channel_url": "http://www.youtube.com/@RickAstleyYT",
  "video_view_count": 1600000000,
  "video_like_count": 17000000,
  "video_published_at": "2009-10-25T06:57:33-07:00",
  "video_duration_seconds": 213,
  "video_category": "Music",
  "video_keywords": ["rick astley", "never gonna give you up"],
  "video_description": "The official video for ...",
  "video_thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "is_family_safe": true
}

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
comment_id	string	Unique YouTube comment identifier
text	string	Full comment text
author	string	Commenter's display name
author_channel_id	string	Commenter's channel ID
author_channel_url	string	Commenter's channel URL
author_avatar	string	Commenter's avatar image URL
author_is_verified	boolean	Whether the commenter's channel is verified
author_is_creator	boolean	Whether the comment is by the video's own channel
likes	integer	Number of likes on the comment
published	string	Relative publish time (e.g. "3 days ago")
reply_level	integer	Thread depth (0 = top‑level, 1 = reply)
replies_count	integer	Number of replies attached to the comment
is_reply	boolean	true for replies, false for top‑level comments
video_id	string	Source video ID
video_url	string	Source video URL
video_title	string	Video title
channel_name	string	Video's channel name
channel_id	string	Video's channel ID
channel_url	string	Video's channel URL
video_view_count	integer	Video view count
video_like_count	integer	Video like count
video_published_at	string	Video publish date (ISO 8601)
video_duration_seconds	integer	Video duration in seconds
video_category	string	Video category
video_keywords	string[]	Video tags / keywords
video_description	string	Video description
video_thumbnail	string	Video thumbnail URL
is_family_safe	boolean	Whether the video is marked family‑safe

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🏆 Why choose this scraper?

	YouTube Comments Scraper	Official YouTube Data API
API key / OAuth setup	❌ Not needed	✅ Required
Daily quota limits	❌ None	⚠️ Strict quotas
Coding required	❌ No code	✅ Yes
Nested reply threads	✅ Full threads	⚠️ Limited / paginated
Geo‑restricted videos	✅ Handled automatically	❌ Often blocked
Author + video metadata on every row	✅ Built in	❌ Manual joins
Export to CSV / Excel / JSON / XML	✅ One click	❌ Build it yourself

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❓ FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key or developer account? No. The Actor works out of the box — no API key, OAuth, or quota management.

Can I scrape replies, not just top‑level comments? Yes. Replies are included by default and full nested threads are captured. Turn off Include replies for top‑level comments only.

Does it work with YouTube Shorts? Yes — Shorts, standard videos, youtu.be links, and mobile URLs are all supported.

What about videos that are only available in certain countries? The Actor automatically detects each video's available countries and routes traffic through a matching region, so geo‑restricted videos still return comments.

How many comments can I scrape? As many as the video has. Use Max comments per video to cap the volume, or leave it empty for everything.

In what formats can I export the data? JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML, or RSS — and you can also pull data programmatically via the Apify API and integrations.

Can I automate or schedule it? Yes. Run it on a schedule, trigger it via the API/webhooks, or connect it to Zapier, Make, n8n, and Google Sheets.

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🙋 Support & feedback

Found a bug, need an extra field, or have a feature request? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab — feedback is welcome and helps improve the Actor for everyone.