YouTube Scraper
Pricing
Pay per usage
YouTube Scraper
Search YouTube and pull public video details (title, channel, views, date, length, description, tags) - no API key or setup needed. Optional free YouTube Data API key adds official stats and comments. Optional Apify residential proxy for higher volume. Free while in launch promo.
Pricing
Pay per usage
Rating
5.0
(1)
Developer
Omar Gamal
Maintained by CommunityActor stats
0
Bookmarked
2
Total users
1
Monthly active users
3 hours ago
Last modified
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This YouTube Scraper searches YouTube and collects public video data - no API key and no setup needed. Paste a search query or video URLs and run.
Free while in launch promo. The most-used YouTube actors charge ~$4 per 1,000 videos; this one charges $0 - you only spend a little Apify compute.
Two modes
- No key (default): reads the same public pages your browser loads and parses the data YouTube embeds in them. Perfect for small and medium jobs. Honest limit: YouTube can throttle datacenter traffic at very high volume.
- Optional free YouTube Data API key: official Google API (10,000 free units/day - thousands of videos). Adds official view/like/comment counts and top comments. Get a key at console.cloud.google.com: create a project, enable YouTube Data API v3, create credentials > API key.
Example
Search query apify, max results 5: five videos with title, channel, views,
publish date, length and thumbnail. Or pass video URLs (watch, youtu.be,
shorts, or bare IDs) for full details per video: description, tags, category.
Optional: Apify residential proxy
For high-volume no-key runs you can set Proxy = Residential. Requests then go through Apify's own residential proxy service (no third-party proxies, no stealth or fingerprint tricks - just a different egress IP). Apify bills residential proxy traffic per GB on your account.
Measured on this actor: one video page transfers ~0.1 MB, so the proxy adds roughly $0.80-$1.30 per 1,000 videos (at Apify's $8/GB residential rate), plus about $0.40/1K of compute. Without the proxy, compute alone is a few cents per 1,000 videos.
Input
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Search query | Like the YouTube search box; top N results (up to 50) |
| Video URLs | watch/youtu.be/shorts links or bare IDs, full details per video |
| API key | Optional; unlocks stats + comments |
| Proxy | Off by default; "Residential" uses Apify's own proxy, billed per GB by Apify |
| Include comments | Top comments per video (API key only) |
Output per video
Title, channel (name + ID), views, publish date, length, category, tags,
description, thumbnail, URL. With an API key also like/comment counts and a
comments array (text, likes, time, reply count).
Privacy by design: comment author names are never collected.
FAQ
No key needed? Correct - the default mode reads public pages. The optional key adds official stats and comments. Will it work at scale? At very high volume YouTube throttles datacenter IPs; the optional Apify residential proxy covers that case honestly.
Cost
The actor is free. A typical no-proxy run uses well under $0.01 of Apify compute. With the residential proxy option, budget roughly $1-$2 of Apify platform usage per 1,000 videos (measured, see above).
