YouTube Comments Scraper — Comments & Replies Export

What does it do?

Overview

This YouTube comments scraper collects the public comments and their reply threads from YouTube videos, Shorts, playlists and channels, and returns one flat row per comment or reply. Every row links back to its parent (parentId, threadDepth), so conversations are easy to rebuild. Results can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or read through the Apify API.

It uses YouTube's own public web responses. No login, no cookies and no YouTube API key are needed. Only comments visible to any visitor are collected.

Use cases

• Brand and community managers — read what viewers say under your videos and your competitors' videos.
• Researchers and data teams — build comment datasets for sentiment analysis, topic modelling or LLM fine-tuning.
• Creators and agencies — find questions, feature requests and pinned or creator-hearted comments.
• Moderation and audits — export a full thread with author channel IDs for review.

Features

• Top-level comments and replies in one dataset (replies on by default).
• Accepts video URLs (watch, youtu.be, Shorts, embed), bare 11-character video IDs, playlist URLs and channel URLs (@handle, /channel/UC…). Playlists and channels expand to their latest videos.
• Sort by Top or Newest, as offered by YouTube.
• Thread fields: parentId, threadDepth, and threadText (the whole thread as plain text on each top-level comment, handy for LLM prompts).
• Flags: isPinned, isHeartedByCreator, isChannelOwner, isVerifiedAuthor, isMember, isEdited.
• publishedAtEstimate: YouTube only shows relative times ("6 years ago"), so an approximate ISO date is computed from it. It is an estimate, and only for English (language: "en").
• Hard caps (maxResults, maxCommentsPerVideo, maxRepliesPerComment) to control cost.

Input

Configuration

Field	Type	Default	Description
startUrls (required)	array	—	Video, Shorts, playlist or channel URLs, or bare video IDs.
maxVideosPerSource	integer	5	Videos to expand per playlist or channel (1–500).
maxCommentsPerVideo	integer	100	Max top-level comments per video (1–100000). Replies are counted separately.
includeReplies	boolean	true	Fetch the reply thread under each comment.
maxRepliesPerComment	integer	50	Max replies per top-level comment (0 = none).
sortBy	string	top	top or newest.
maxResults	integer	200	Hard cap on total rows (comments + replies) for the run.
language	string	en	Interface language (hl). Date estimates only work for English.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify datacenter	Switch to residential only if YouTube shows consent or "unusual traffic" pages.

Example input

{
  "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"],
  "maxCommentsPerVideo": 20,
  "includeReplies": true,
  "maxRepliesPerComment": 5,
  "sortBy": "top",
  "maxResults": 60
}

Output

Example output

Each row is a comment or a reply. Sample (shortened, author data replaced by placeholders):

[
  {
    "type": "comment",
    "commentId": "UgxExampleCommentId000",
    "parentId": null,
    "threadDepth": 0,
    "videoId": "jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "videoTitle": "Me at the zoo",
    "text": "Example comment text.",
    "authorName": "@example-author",
    "authorChannelId": "UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "authorChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "isChannelOwner": false,
    "isVerifiedAuthor": true,
    "isMember": false,
    "likeCount": 120,
    "replyCount": 3,
    "isHeartedByCreator": true,
    "isPinned": true,
    "isEdited": false,
    "publishedTimeText": "6 years ago",
    "publishedAtEstimate": "2020-10-04T00:00:00.000Z",
    "threadText": "@example-author: Example comment text.\n@example-replier: Example reply. …",
    "position": 1,
    "sortBy": "top",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-04T07:44:20.368Z",
    "error": null
  },
  {
    "type": "reply",
    "commentId": "UgxExampleCommentId000.ExampleReplyId",
    "parentId": "UgxExampleCommentId000",
    "threadDepth": 1,
    "text": "Example reply.",
    "authorName": "@example-replier",
    "likeCount": 5,
    "replyCount": null,
    "threadText": null,
    "position": 2
  }
]

Output fields and fill rates

Fill rates are measured on a real Apify run (41 rows, run rXFDAUvYaN4UMicDJ). Lower values are expected: parentId is only set on replies, and replyCount / threadText only on top-level comments.

Field	Fill rate	Notes
type, commentId, text, threadDepth, position, sortBy	100%	type is comment or reply.
videoId, videoUrl, videoTitle, sourceUrl	100%
authorName, authorChannelId, authorChannelUrl	100%
likeCount, publishedTimeText, publishedAtEstimate	100%	Date is an estimate.
isChannelOwner, isVerifiedAuthor, isMember, isPinned, isHeartedByCreator, isEdited	100%
scrapedAt	100%
replyCount	80%	Top-level comments only.
threadText	80%	Top-level comments only.
parentId	20%	Replies only.
error	0%	null on normal rows.

How to use via API

Calling the Actor

Replace YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN with your token. Actor ID: prosoralex~youtube-comments-replies-export (check the exact owner/name on the Actor page).

curl

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/prosoralex~youtube-comments-replies-export/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"startUrls":["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"],"maxResults":60}'

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('prosoralex/youtube-comments-replies-export').call({
  startUrls: ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw'],
  includeReplies: true,
  maxResults: 60,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.length);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("prosoralex/youtube-comments-replies-export").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"],
    "includeReplies": True,
    "maxResults": 60,
})
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
print(len(items))

Pricing

Pay per result

Pay per result: you are charged per dataset row (a comment or a reply). The price per 1,000 results depends on your Apify plan:

Plan	Price per 1,000 results
Free	$0.30
Bronze	$0.26
Silver	$0.23
Gold and above	$0.20

Apify platform usage (compute) is billed separately by Apify. In our test runs it was a fraction of a cent for 25–41 rows. Set maxResults to cap your spending.

Troubleshooting

Common issues

• Fewer rows than expected — maxResults, maxCommentsPerVideo or maxRepliesPerComment stopped the run, or the video has comments disabled or few comments.
• Consent or "unusual traffic" pages — switch proxyConfiguration to Apify residential proxies.
• publishedAtEstimate is empty — it is only computed for English; keep language at en.
• Input error "startUrls is required" — provide at least one URL or video ID.
• Private, deleted or age-restricted videos — only publicly visible comments are available; no login is used.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a YouTube API key? No.

Are replies included? Yes, by default. Set includeReplies to false to get top-level comments only.

Is the date exact? No. YouTube shows relative times, so publishedAtEstimate is approximate; the original text is in publishedTimeText.

Can I scrape a whole channel? Yes: give a channel URL and set maxVideosPerSource. The latest videos are expanded.

Is it legal? The Actor collects only publicly visible data. Comments contain personal data (names, channel IDs), so handle them according to GDPR and local law, and respect YouTube's terms. Use is at your own responsibility.

Keywords

youtube comments scraper, youtube replies scraper, youtube comments export, youtube comment replies, export youtube comments to csv, youtube comments dataset, youtube comments sentiment analysis, youtube comments api alternative, youtube shorts comments

Hashtags

#youtube #youtubecomments #commentsscraper #webscraping #sentimentanalysis #dataset #socialmedia #apify