YouTube Search Scraper: Extract Video Data Without an API Key

This YouTube search scraper lets you extract video data from any search query without needing an official YouTube API key or a Google account. It runs efficiently on 128MB of memory to keep costs low.

Use cases

• Market research: track emerging trends by seeing which videos rank for your industry keywords
• Competitor analysis: monitor what your competitors are publishing and how many views they get
• Content strategy: find popular topics and titles to inspire your next videos
• Influencer discovery: find channels creating content in your niche

Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchQuery	string	Apify Complete Tutorial For Beginners	The keyword phrase you want to search for on YouTube.
maxResults	integer	100	Maximum number of YouTube search results to extract.
proxyConfiguration	object	Datacenter (Anywhere)	Proxy type and location to use for requests. Helps avoid IP blocks. Supports Datacenter, Residential, and Custom proxies. Optional.

Example input

{
    "searchQuery": "apify web scraping",
    "maxResults": 50,
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true
    }
}

Output

The actor stores results in a dataset. Each entry contains:

{
    "kind": "youtube#searchResult",
    "videoId": "yMl16hkeQow",
    "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMl16hkeQow",
    "videoTitle": "Apify Complete Tutorial For Beginners",
    "channelId": "UC9mrd19dfBDZzY7M0w8GanA",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@reviewcentral69",
    "channelTitle": "Review Central",
    "channelHandle": "@reviewcentral69",
    "timestamp": "1 year ago",
    "duration": 637,
    "views": 7234,
    "thumbnails": [
        {
            "url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yMl16hkeQow/hq720.jpg",
            "width": 360,
            "height": 202
        }
    ],
    "channelThumbnails": [
        {
            "url": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/wHHKcxHTzgCiA79QVJUtrAq0pyZRaNoQQUpY90Js750XKYb1Z3obPQjKUsLsu33yQv6o5Rsj=s68-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
            "width": 68,
            "height": 68
        }
    ],
    "detailedMetadataSnippet": [],
    "chapters": []
}

Field	Type	Description
videoId	string	The unique identifier of the YouTube video
videoUrl	string	The URL of the video
videoTitle	string	The title of the video
channelId	string	The ID of the channel
channelUrl	string	The URL of the channel
channelTitle	string	The name of the channel
channelHandle	string	The handle of the channel
timestamp	string	When the video was published
duration	integer	Duration of the video in seconds
views	integer	Number of views

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key to use this? No. This scraper fetches data directly from the public YouTube search page. You don't need a Google account, API key, or OAuth setup.

How many results can I scrape at once? You can usually get up to 500 to 700 results per search query. YouTube eventually stops loading more results on a single search page.

Can I run this on the lowest Apify plan? Yes. The scraper is optimized to run on just 128MB of memory, which makes it extremely cost-effective.

Integrations

Connect YouTube Search Scraper with other apps and services using Apify integrations. You can integrate with Make, Zapier, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub, Google Sheets, Google Drive, and many more. You can also use webhooks to trigger actions whenever results are available.