YouTube Comments Scraper: comment text, likes and replies

Paste a video and get its comments back, one row each: the full text, when it was posted, likes, reply count and a direct link to the comment. Top comments first, in YouTube's own order. Up to 2,000 per video.

Commenter names are left out by default. You get what people said, which is what most comment analysis needs. If you have a lawful reason to need names, there's a switch for it.

Videos with comments turned off, missing videos and duplicates cost nothing.

What you get

Field	Example
text	Gonna flag this for nudity so I can rick roll the YouTube staff
published	6 years ago
likes	568K
replyCount	715
isCreator	false (true when the channel owner commented)
commentId	UgyEnXfdC-umwvTt8JF4AaABAg
url	link straight to the comment
author	null unless you turn names on

Sample output

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "commentId": "UgzKYksqeQ5gA3t0g0F4AaABAg",
  "author": null,
  "authorChannelId": null,
  "text": "I Rick rolled my entire French class because we had to study a city in France...",
  "published": "6 years ago (edited)",
  "likes": "104K",
  "replyCount": "595",
  "isCreator": false,
  "isVerified": false,
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&lc=UgzKYksqeQ5gA3t0g0F4AaABAg"
}

Quick start

1. Paste video links or 11-character video IDs into Videos, one per line.
2. Set Max comments per video (1 to 2,000).
3. Click Start.

The default input pulls 50 top comments from one well-known video and runs as-is.

Use cases

• Read what viewers ask and complain about on your own videos, and on a competitor's.
• Run sentiment or topic analysis on the top comments of a product launch or review video.
• Mine questions for your next video or FAQ page.
• Spot when the creator replies, using isCreator.

What happens when something goes wrong

A video with comments off, a deleted video or a bad link returns 0 rows and isn't charged. Paste the same video twice and you pay once. RUN_SUMMARY in the run's key-value store says what happened to each video.

Pricing

Pay per comment delivered, plus Apify's small start fee per run. Set a maximum cost per run and the scraper stops at your limit.

FAQ

Why are likes "104K" and not exact? That's how YouTube shows comment likes to logged-out visitors. We pass them through as shown.

Why is author empty? Names are off by default to keep personal data out of your dataset. Turn on Include author names if you need them.

Does it get replies? It gives the reply count for each top-level comment. The reply text itself isn't collected.

Something broke? Open an issue with the video link. I answer within a day.

Limitations

• Top-level comments only, in YouTube's "Top comments" order.
• published is relative ("6 years ago"), the way YouTube shows it.
• Comment text is the commenter's own words. Quote it fairly; check before republishing it word for word.

Export or use as an API

Download any run's results from the Storage tab as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML.

To call it from your own code, send your input to Apify's API and get the rows back in one request:

POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/leathered_latch~youtube-comments-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN

It also plugs into Make, Zapier and n8n through Apify's integrations, and AI agents can find and run it through Apify's MCP server.

Your responsibility

How you use the output is your call, and so is the legal side of it. Copyright still covers any text you republish. If you turn on author names, treat them as personal data: if you store or publish them, privacy law (GDPR, CCPA and similar) applies to you. YouTube's own terms apply too. If you're unsure about a use, check with a lawyer first.

If you own content that shows up in these results and want it handled differently, open an issue on the Issues tab. We answer within 14 days.

Data source and credit

Every row comes from YouTube (Google LLC). We don't own this data, and we don't take credit for it. The comments belong to the people who wrote them.

This tool reads only what YouTube shows to any logged-out visitor. No logins, no private data. Each row keeps a link back to the comment (the url field), so you can check any result and credit the source when you use it.

Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by YouTube or Google. All names and trademarks belong to their owners.

Changelog

• 0.2 Author names off by default (includeAuthor).
• 0.1 First release.