YouTube Comments Scraper API – Replies, $0.25/1K, No Login

YouTube Comments Scraper API: Comments, Replies & Likes, No Login

Get every public comment and reply of a YouTube video or Short, with no login, no cookies and no API key. Paste video links, Shorts, a channel, a playlist or a search term. Each row is one comment: full text, likes as a number, reply count, date, author and channel, plus pinned and creator-heart flags. Export it as JSON, CSV or Excel, or call the actor as an API from code, n8n, Make, Zapier or an AI agent.

Built for: sentiment analysis of YouTube comments, brand and product monitoring, audience research, finding complaints or questions under a video, and feeding comments to an LLM to summarize.

Your first 1,000 comments each month are free, so a first test costs only the $0.005 start fee, which Apify's free $5 monthly credit covers. After that it's $0.25 per 1,000 comments, and replies cost the same, with no per-video or per-thread fee. Click Start and the prefilled run returns 20 comments in about 5 seconds. This tool is unofficial and not affiliated with YouTube or Google.

Real rows from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ, Top order, 9 November 2026:

Author	Comment	Likes	Replies	Posted
@Oatman69	Gonna flag this for nudity so I can rick roll the YouTube staff	570,000	733	6 years ago
@bdr8823	My algebra teacher said that this was a link to the test answers	71,000	676	7 years ago
@LK-ht7qz	Let's put the meme aside, this is actually a banging song.	221,000	629	6 years ago

🚀 Pick your starting point

You want	Paste this input
Comments of one video	{ "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"], "maxComments": 500 }
Every comment, with replies	{ "startUrls": ["<video link>"], "maxComments": 0, "includeReplies": true, "maxRepliesPerComment": 0 }
Comments of a Short	{ "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kPI9Mc35mOg"] }
A channel's latest 10 videos	{ "startUrls": ["@mkbhd"], "maxVideos": 10, "maxComments": 200 }
What people say about a product	{ "searchQueries": ["iphone 17 case review"], "maxVideos": 10 }
Sentiment analysis data (most-liked first)	{ "startUrls": ["<video link>"], "maxComments": 1000, "minLikes": 5 }
Only the last 7 days	{ "startUrls": ["<video or channel>"], "publishedAfter": "7 days" }
New comments on a schedule	{ "startUrls": ["@yourchannel"], "monitorName": "my-channel" }
Complaints only	{ "startUrls": ["<video>"], "keywords": ["broken", "refund", "doesn't work"] }

🔍 What does it do?

• Comments by link. Accepts watch links, youtu.be links, Shorts and live links, and bare 11-character video IDs.
• Replies. Turn on includeReplies to get the replies under each comment, linked to their parent by parentCommentId.
• Channels, playlists and searches. Reads the comments of a channel's latest videos, a playlist's first videos, or the top videos for a search term.
• Top or Newest. You choose YouTube's own order.
• Date limit. With publishedAfter set to 2026-10-01 or 7 days, each video stops at the first older comment, so you don't pay to scan old comments.
• Monitoring. Give a scheduled run a monitorName and each run returns and charges only comments it hasn't returned before.
• Free filters. keywords and minLikes remove comments before they are charged.

💡 Why choose this actor?

	This actor	The two most-used YouTube comment scrapers on the Store (checked 9 Nov 2026)
Price per 1,000 comments (Bronze)	$0.25	$0.50 and $1.50
Per-video or per-thread fee	None	$0.001 per video, plus per reply thread on one actor
Replies	✅ Same price as comments	Some don't offer replies; one charges per thread
Free every month	✅ 1,000 comments	None; one allows 5 runs of 10 items
Likes and replies as numbers	✅ 570K becomes 570000	Often text such as 3.4K
Date	✅ YouTube's text plus an estimated publishedAt date	Text only, or no date field
Video title and exact comment total on each row	✅	Varies
Channel, playlist or search as input	✅	Video links only
Only new comments	✅ One field; the memory is kept for you	You track it yourself

Our test runs: 3,000 rows (2,555 comments and 445 replies) from 2 videos in 59 seconds, with 0 duplicates and 0 refused requests. Each of 3 Shorts returned 700 comments.

💰 Pricing

You pay per event, and only for comments you receive.

Event	What you get	Free plan	Bronze	Silver	Gold and up
comment	One comment or reply	$0.30 / 1K	$0.25 / 1K	$0.22 / 1K	$0.20 / 1K
apify-actor-start	Charged once per run	$0.005	$0.005	$0.005	$0.005

Free every month: the first 1,000 comments for each user. Comments removed by your filters cost nothing. Set a maximum cost per run and the actor stops cleanly at that limit. In our test, a $0.02 limit returned exactly 60 comments.

📥 Input

Field	What it does
startUrls	Video, Shorts, live, channel, @handle or playlist links, or video IDs
searchQueries	Search terms; reads the top videos for each
maxComments	Rows per video, counting comments and replies. Default 100; 0 means all
sort	top (default) or newest
includeReplies, maxRepliesPerComment	Replies on or off, and how many per comment
publishedAfter	2026-10-01 or 7 days; switches to newest
monitorName	Returns only comments not returned before under this name
keywords, minLikes	Free filters
maxVideos	Videos per channel, playlist or search. Default 5
maxResults	A cap on rows for the whole run

📤 Output

{
  "type": "comment",
  "commentId": "UgyEnXfdC-umwvTt8JF4AaABAg",
  "text": "Gonna flag this for nudity so I can rick roll the YouTube staff",
  "likeCount": 570000,
  "likeCountText": "570K",
  "replyCount": 733,
  "publishedTimeText": "6 years ago",
  "publishedAt": "2020-11-08",
  "isEdited": false,
  "isPinned": false,
  "isHeartedByCreator": false,
  "author": "@Oatman69",
  "authorChannelId": "UCWf34D_s8K_m2vwBISIDWtg",
  "authorChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@Oatman69",
  "authorIsVerified": false,
  "authorIsVideoOwner": false,
  "parentCommentId": null,
  "position": 1,
  "commentUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&lc=UgyEnXfdC-umwvTt8JF4AaABAg",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoTitle": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "videoChannelName": "Rick Astley",
  "videoCommentCount": 2461564,
  "sort": "top",
  "inputType": "video",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-08T18:13:29Z"
}

A reply has "type": "reply" and the parent's ID in parentCommentId. Rows also carry authorAvatarUrl, authorIsArtist, videoUrl, videoChannelId and input. The RUN_SUMMARY record in the key-value store says what happened to each video: OK, COMMENTS_OFF, VIDEO_NOT_FOUND, NO_COMMENTS, NO_MATCHES or NO_NEW_COMMENTS.

❓ FAQ

Do I need a YouTube account or API key? No. You get the comments a logged-out visitor sees, and the YouTube Data API's daily quota doesn't apply.

Are like counts exact? Below 1,000 they are exact. Above that, YouTube shows a rounded figure such as 570K, and we turn it into 570000. Reply counts and the video's total comment count (videoCommentCount) are exact.

How exact are dates? YouTube shows dates as text, such as 3 days ago or 6 years ago. We keep that text in publishedTimeText and estimate a date from it in publishedAt. Recent comments are accurate to the day; old ones only to the month or year.

Can I get every comment of a big video? Yes. Set maxComments to 0. A video with millions of comments takes a long time and costs accordingly, so set a spending limit. YouTube's comment total counts replies, and hides some held or removed comments, so the number of rows can differ from it.

Why is a comment's text empty? YouTube sends a few comments with no text, usually ones it is holding or has removed. We keep the row so the ID, author and likes aren't lost. In our test this was 58 of 3,000 newest comments.

Why did a video return nothing? RUN_SUMMARY gives the reason. Comments can be turned off: YouTube does this for all videos made for kids, and some channels turn them off on Shorts. The video may also be private or deleted.

Does it work for Shorts? Yes. Shorts comments work like any video's. Live chat messages aren't comments and aren't included.

How fast is it? About 50 comments per second for one run. Several videos are read in parallel.

Is it legal? It collects public data. You're responsible for how you use it, including YouTube's terms and privacy law. Comments are written by people, so treat author names and text with care, and don't collect more than you need.

🤖 Use it from code

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/k-data-lab~youtube-comments-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"startUrls":["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"],"maxComments":100}'

🧠 Use it from AI agents (MCP)

Connect the Apify MCP server to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any other MCP client, then add the actor k-data-lab/youtube-comments-scraper. It returns plain JSON and needs no YouTube login, so an agent can call it right away.

The agent is asked to	Input to send
Summarize what viewers think of a video	{ "startUrls": ["<video link>"], "maxComments": 300 }
Find complaints about a product on YouTube	{ "searchQueries": ["<product> review"], "maxVideos": 5, "keywords": ["broke", "return"] }
Get this week's comments on a channel	{ "startUrls": ["@handle"], "publishedAfter": "7 days" }
Read the replies under the top comments	{ "startUrls": ["<video link>"], "maxComments": 50, "includeReplies": true }

| Get comments for sentiment analysis | { "startUrls": ["<video link>"], "maxComments": 1000, "sort": "top" } | | Comments of a YouTube Short | { "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/shorts/<id>"] } |

You need startUrls or searchQueries; every other field is optional. Rows are flat JSON with numeric likeCount and replyCount, so an agent can sort or count them without parsing text. A call for 300 comments costs at most $0.08, and only the $0.005 start fee while the free monthly quota lasts.

🧰 More from K-Data Lab

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• Google Maps Scraper API: places, phones and ratings
• Amazon Seller Central Review Scraper: your brand's Amazon reviews
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• Korean real estate: KB Land · R114

💬 Feedback

Is a field missing, or does a video not work? Open an issue on the Issues tab. We answer the same day.

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