YouTube Scraper
Pricing
Pay per usage
YouTube Scraper
YouTube scraper with transcript extraction. Search videos, scrape channels, get exact metadata, and extract subtitles/captions with timestamps. No API key, no browser. Fast HTTP-only.
Pricing
Pay per usage
Rating
0.0
(0)
Developer
kane liu
Actor stats
0
Bookmarked
6
Total users
3
Monthly active users
a day ago
Last modified
Categories
Share
Search YouTube, scrape channels, and extract transcripts — all in one run, no API key needed.
- ✅ Search across 2.7 billion monthly users' worth of content — by keyword, channel, or specific video URL
- ✅ Get titles, views, duration, descriptions, thumbnails, categories, publish dates — 20+ fields per video
- ✅ Extract full transcripts with timestamps — auto-generated or manual captions in any language
- ✅ Download as Excel, CSV, or JSON — no Google API key, no coding required
- ✅ Pay only for what you use: $0.002 per video, transcripts included free
- ✅ Free $5 Apify credit on signup = ~2,500 videos to start with
Hit the YouTube Data API's daily quota wall? Google gives you 100 searches a day, then cuts you off — no paid option to buy more. This Actor has no quota limit and costs $0.002 per video, transcripts included.
What you can do with it
1. Search YouTube and export results to a spreadsheet
Want to see every video about "python automation" published this year, with view counts, durations, and channel names — in a spreadsheet you can sort and filter? That's what this does. Type a keyword, set how many results you want, and get a clean table back.
To run a search, you fill in a short form on the Apify page — just two fields are enough:
What you enter:
| What | Example |
|---|---|
| Search keywords | python automation or home workout |
| How many results | 100 |
Click Start. About a minute later, the Actor has searched YouTube for you and returned every matching video in a table:
What you get back:
| Title | Channel | Views | Duration | Published | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automate Everything with Python | Tech With Tim | 1.2M | 45:12 | 3 months ago | Education |
| Python Automation Projects for Beginners | freeCodeCamp | 890K | 1:08:23 | 5 months ago | Education |
| … | … | … | … | … | … |
Every row has everything you need to analyze the video landscape for your topic. Download as Excel, CSV, or JSON, or pipe into Google Sheets via Make or Zapier.
2. Break free from the YouTube Data API quota wall
Google's official YouTube Data API gives you 10,000 quota units per day — sounds like a lot, but a single search costs 100 units, which means you get only 100 searches per day. After that, you're blocked until midnight Pacific Time. There's no paid option to buy more. If you're building an app, running research, or doing any kind of production workflow, that quota wall hits fast.
This Actor has no daily quota. You pay $0.002 per video, run as many searches as you want, and get richer data than the official API returns (including transcripts, which the Data API doesn't provide at all without a separate Captions API call):
What you enter:
| What | Example |
|---|---|
| Search keywords | machine learning explained |
| How many results | 500 |
| Get full details? | Yes |
| Include transcript? | Yes |
What you get back (500 videos with full metadata + transcripts, about 5-10 minutes):
| Title | Channel | Views | Published (exact) | Category | Transcript (first line) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| How LLMs Work — A Visual Intro | 3Blue1Brown | 8.4M | 2026-01-15 | Education | "The transformer architecture has fundamentally..." |
| ML Crash Course | 3.1M | 2025-09-20 | Science & Tech | "Machine learning is a way to teach..." | |
| … | … | … | … | … | … |
Cost for this run: about $1. One dollar for 500 videos with transcripts. The YouTube Data API would have burned through your entire daily quota on the search step alone, and wouldn't have given you transcripts at all.
3. Extract transcripts and subtitles for content analysis
Need the full spoken text of a YouTube video — with timestamps — for content repurposing, SEO analysis, podcast-to-blog conversion, or AI training data? This Actor pulls the complete transcript from any video that has captions, in any language YouTube supports.
Point it at a specific video URL (or a list of URLs) and turn on transcripts:
What you enter:
| What | Example |
|---|---|
| Video URLs | one or more YouTube links |
| Include transcript? | Yes |
| Transcript language | en (or es, ja, de, fr, etc.) |
What you get back:
| Video | Channel | Duration | Transcript language | Full text (first 100 chars) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How LLMs Work | 3Blue1Brown | 26:31 | English | "The transformer architecture has fundamentally changed how we think about..." |
| Python Full Course | freeCodeCamp | 4:26:52 | English | "Welcome to this full Python course. We'll start with the basics and work our..." |
Each transcript comes back as both a structured array (with start time, duration, and text per segment — useful for timestamped analysis) and as a single plain-text string (useful for feeding into an LLM, search index, or text analysis tool). The Actor handles both auto-generated and manually uploaded captions — you get whichever is available.
4. Track competitor channels on a weekly schedule
Want to know every time a competitor channel publishes a new video, what topics they're covering, and how their view counts are trending? Point this Actor at their channel URL, run it weekly, and diff the results to spot new uploads, view count jumps, and content strategy shifts.
What you enter:
| What | Example |
|---|---|
| Channel URLs | one or more YouTube channel links (supports @handles) |
| How many results | 200 (per channel) |
| Get full details? | Yes |
Use Apify's built-in Scheduler (or a Zapier / Make trigger) to run it every Monday. Each run gives you a fresh snapshot of the channel's video library:
What you get back (scheduled weekly):
| Title | Views | Published | Duration | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Video This Week | 45K | 2026-04-14 | 18:42 | Education |
| Last Week's Upload | 120K | 2026-04-07 | 22:15 | Education |
| Older Hit | 2.1M | 2025-11-20 | 1:08:23 | Education |
| … | … | … | … | … |
Compare this week's file to last week's to spot new uploads, view velocity (how fast each video is growing), and topic shifts. A simple spreadsheet diff or a Make/Zapier automation handles the comparison for you.
5. Use it from ChatGPT, Claude, or no-code automation
Ask your AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor) a question like "find the top 20 YouTube videos about 'home workout' sorted by views, and extract the transcript from the top 3" — it runs this Actor and returns real, current data back into the conversation. Also works as a "Run Actor" step in Make, n8n, and Zapier.
Connect the Apify MCP server once in your assistant's settings (configuration in the developer section below), and from then on you just ask questions in plain English:
What you enter (a plain-English question, not a form):
| What | Example |
|---|---|
| Search keywords | home workout |
| How many results | 20 |
| Include transcript? | Yes (for the top ones) |
The assistant runs the search and shows the results in the conversation. You can follow up — "show me just the ones over 1M views" or "extract the transcript from the top 3" or "export to Google Sheets" — and your assistant handles it without re-running the search.
How to use (no code required)
- Click "Try for Free" at the top of this page
- Enter a search keyword, a channel URL (supports @handles), or a specific video URL — or mix all three in one run
- Set how many results you want (default 50, up to 5,000)
- (Optional) Turn on "Get full details" for exact publish dates, categories, and like counts
- (Optional) Turn on "Include transcript" for full subtitles with timestamps in any language
- Click Start — results appear in the Dataset tab in a minute or two, ready to download as Excel, CSV, or JSON
That's the whole workflow — type, wait, download. If you've ever typed a search into YouTube, you already know how to use this Actor. The difference is that instead of watching one video at a time, you get the metadata (and optionally the full transcript) for hundreds of videos in a single spreadsheet.
No API key needed. This Actor doesn't use the YouTube Data API at all — it works through publicly accessible YouTube endpoints, so there's no quota wall and no Google Cloud billing to set up.
Transcripts are free. The $0.002/video price includes transcript extraction at no extra cost. This is the main reason this Actor is cheaper than alternatives that charge separately for transcripts.
The $5 free Apify credit you get on signup covers ~2,500 videos — enough to run real content research or a full competitor audit before spending anything.
What you get back
Each video comes back as one row in a table. Here's everything you'll see in that row:
- Video title, channel name, and channel URL
- View count, duration (human-readable like "45:12" and in seconds), and publish date (relative like "3 months ago", or exact ISO date if you turned on full details)
- Video description — snippet in search mode, full text in details mode
- Thumbnail URL — highest-quality thumbnail image
- Category (Education, Science & Technology, Entertainment, etc.) and live stream status
- Direct YouTube URL for the video
- Full transcript (when enabled): an array of timestamped segments (start time + duration + text) plus a single concatenated plain-text string — useful for feeding into LLMs, building search indexes, or converting video content to written articles
Each result set comes back as a table you can download as Excel, CSV, or JSON, or pipe into any downstream tool through Zapier or Make.
Data sources
All data comes directly from YouTube's publicly accessible endpoints — the same pages and data any visitor sees at youtube.com without logging in. Every run is a live fetch at run time, so results reflect what YouTube is showing at that moment.
YouTube hosts content from 2.7 billion monthly active users, with 500 hours of new video uploaded every minute. Coverage is global and includes every language YouTube supports.
Pricing
Pay per video. Transcripts included free.
Billing is simple: you pay a small fee to kick off a run, plus a per-video fee for each result the Actor returns. Transcripts come bundled — you never pay extra for them, even for long videos with thousands of caption segments.
| What triggers a charge | Cost |
|---|---|
| Actor start (each run) | $0.005 |
| Each video scraped | $0.002 |
| Transcript for that video | Free — included in the $0.002 price |
To give you a feel for what this looks like in actual dollars:
Real-world cost examples:
| Scenario | Videos | Total cost |
|---|---|---|
| Quick keyword check | 50 | $0.105 |
| Competitor channel audit | 200 | $0.405 |
| Full topic research with transcripts | 1,000 | $2.005 |
| Large-scale content dataset | 5,000 | $10.005 |
The cost scales linearly — double the videos, double the cost. No tier thresholds, no surprise jumps.
$5 free Apify credit = ~2,500 videos with transcripts — enough to build a real content research dataset before paying anything.
How this compares to the alternatives:
| Tool | Price | What you get | What you don't get |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube Data API v3 (Google) | Free, but 10,000 units/day = 100 searches/day hard cap | Official API, structured data | No paid tier to buy more quota; transcripts require separate Captions API |
| Bright Data YouTube | $0.0025/record ($250 minimum) or $1.50/1K live scraper ($499/mo entry) | Raw YouTube data, enterprise scale | $250 minimum buy-in, enterprise subscription model |
| VidIQ | $5.98–$159/mo | YouTube SEO dashboard, keyword research | Dashboard only — no raw data export, no transcripts |
| TubeBuddy | $9–$49/mo | YouTube channel management tools | Dashboard only — no bulk data export |
| Social Blade | $3.99–$99.99/mo | Channel statistics tracker | Analytics dashboard, not a data extraction tool |
| Other Apify scrapers | $0.50–$5.00/1K videos | YouTube search data | No transcript extraction bundled |
| This Actor | $0.005/run + $0.002/video | Search + channel + video details + transcripts included free, pay-per-use, MCP native | — |
No annual contract. No subscription. No daily quota. $5 free credit covers ~2,500 videos — start there.
If you run zero searches in a month, you owe zero dollars. The YouTube Data API doesn't even offer a paid option.
Connect to your tools
Use this Actor from any of the major no-code and automation tools. You don't need to write or edit any code — each tool has a built-in Apify connector that handles the wiring for you:
| Platform | How to connect |
|---|---|
| Make.com | Search "Apify" → "Run Actor" → use Actor ID lentic_clockss/youtube-scraper |
| n8n | Add Apify node → "Run Actor" → same Actor ID |
| Zapier | Apify integration → "Run Actor" trigger |
| ChatGPT / Claude / Cursor | Connect via Apify's MCP endpoint — your AI assistant calls this Actor directly inside a chat |
| LangChain, Python, custom code | Via Apify SDK or direct API call |
The three most common setups in practice:
- With ChatGPT, Claude, or Cursor: connect once via MCP (configuration in the developer section below), then ask in plain English — "find the top 50 videos about 'react tutorial' and extract the transcript from the top 5" — your assistant runs it and returns the results in the conversation.
- With Make or Zapier: set up a scheduled automation (for example: "every Monday, search YouTube for my brand name, write new videos to Google Sheets, alert me on Slack if a competitor channel posted about us"). Configure once, it runs forever.
- With n8n: same idea as Make and Zapier, with a self-hosted option if your data needs to stay on your own infrastructure.
When to use something else
This Actor is built specifically for extracting video metadata and transcripts from YouTube. For anything outside that scope, here are the tools that fit better:
| If you need… | Use this instead |
|---|---|
| YouTube channel growth analytics (subscriber trends, daily stats) | Social Blade — it's built for long-term tracking dashboards |
| YouTube SEO optimization (keyword research, tag suggestions) | VidIQ or TubeBuddy — they're channel management tools |
| YouTube Shorts specifically (different data shape) | Our YouTube Shorts Scraper — dedicated to Shorts format |
| Facebook / Instagram ad creatives | Facebook Ad Library Scraper |
| Local business data (restaurants, shops) | Google Maps Scraper |
| Scraping arbitrary websites behind anti-bot protection | Stealth Web Scraper |
FAQ
Q: Do I need a YouTube Data API key or a Google Cloud account? A: No. This Actor works through publicly accessible YouTube endpoints — no API key, no Google Cloud project, no quota system. You just need your Apify token.
Q: How fresh is the data? A: Every run is a live fetch at run time. Results reflect what YouTube is showing at that moment — if a video was uploaded an hour ago, you'll see it.
Q: Can I get transcripts for any video? A: For any video that has captions enabled — either auto-generated by YouTube or manually uploaded by the creator. Videos without any captions return an empty transcript field. About 85%+ of English-language videos have auto-generated captions.
Q: What languages are supported for transcripts?
A: Any language YouTube supports. Set the transcriptLanguage field to the language code you want (e.g. en, es, ja, de, fr). If that language isn't available for a specific video, the Actor falls back to the first available language and tells you which one it used.
Q: Can I combine search, channel, and video URL scraping in one run? A: Yes. You can set all three input fields at once — search keywords, channel URLs, and individual video URLs — and the Actor runs all of them in a single job, deduplicating results by video ID.
Q: Can I get 5,000+ videos in one run?
A: Yes. The maxResults field goes up to 5,000 per search query or channel. For larger datasets, run multiple searches with different keywords and combine the output files.
Q: Why is my search returning fewer results than I asked for? A: YouTube limits the number of results it returns for some queries (especially very specific or niche searches). Broadening your keyword or removing filters typically unlocks more results.
Q: Can I run this on a schedule? A: Yes. Apify has a built-in scheduler (set it in the Actor's Schedules tab) or you can trigger it from Make / Zapier / n8n on any cadence. Popular setup: weekly competitor channel monitoring + keyword trend tracking.
Related Actors
- YouTube Shorts Scraper — dedicated to YouTube Shorts format
- Google Maps Scraper — pull any local business data from Google Maps
- Facebook Ad Library Scraper — see what ads any brand is running on Facebook and Instagram
- Stealth Web Scraper — scrape Cloudflare-protected and anti-bot sites
→ Browse all Actors: apify.com/lentic_clockss
Also Available
- Direct API:
https://opendata.best/api/v1/data— use with any HTTP client and your API key - Postman Collection: Fork and test — pre-built requests with example responses
- GitHub: Collection source files — import JSON into any API client
