YouTube Search Scraper — Scrape Videos, Channels & Playlists by Keyword (No API Key)

Scrape YouTube videos, channels and playlists by keyword and export every matching result in bulk. This YouTube search scraper (also a YouTube keyword scraper and video-search exporter) returns full metadata — title, exact view count, duration, publish time, channel and URL — with no login, no cookies and no Google API key. It supports YouTube's real filters (upload date, duration, type, sort order), runs many queries at once, and paginates deep into the results — hundreds to thousands per query.

🏆 Why this YouTube search scraper?

Real YouTube filters (sort by relevance/date/views/rating, upload-date & duration chips) · bulk multi-keyword in one run · videos, channels and playlists · view counts as real integers · deep pagination · no API quota (the official API caps at ~100 searches/day). The unofficial YouTube search API alternative — with no API key and no login.

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✨ What this Actor does / Key features

• 🔍 Search by keyword — every query is scraped separately and tagged in the output (query).
• 🎛️ Real YouTube filters — type (video/channel/playlist/movie/any), sortBy (relevance/date/views/rating), uploadDate (hour→year) and duration (short/medium/long) — encoded into YouTube's own params, so results match the filter chips on youtube.com exactly.
• 📊 Rich metadata — exact viewCount (integer), duration + durationSeconds, relative publishedTime, channel title & ID, and a description snippet.
• 📦 Bulk multi-query — pass many keywords in one run, with per-query and global caps.
• 📄 Deep pagination — continuation tokens page to YouTube's result ceiling or your maxResultsPerQuery.
• 🧩 Resilient — fetches a fresh access key per run with retries; calls YouTube's internal search (the same the website uses).
• 🚫 No API quota — no OAuth, no daily cap.
• 💾 Export anywhere — download as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or pull via the Apify API.

🚀 Quick start (3 steps)

1. Configure — enter your keywords in Search queries (e.g. ["lofi hip hop", "react tutorial"]), and optionally set type, sortBy, uploadDate, duration and maxResultsPerQuery.
2. Run — click Start. The Actor searches each keyword, paginates the results, and streams one row per result into your dataset.
3. Get your data — open the Output tab and export to JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or pull it via the Apify API.

📥 Input

Give the Actor at least one entry in searchQueries. Everything else has sensible defaults.

Example — freshest phone reviews this month, newest first

{
  "searchQueries": ["iphone 17 review", "pixel 10 review"],
  "type": "video",
  "sortBy": "date",
  "uploadDate": "month",
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 200
}

Example — top videos for a topic by view count

{
  "searchQueries": ["lofi hip hop"],
  "type": "video",
  "sortBy": "views",
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 300
}

Example — find channels in a niche

{
  "searchQueries": ["home barista", "specialty coffee"],
  "type": "channel",
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 100
}

Field	Type	Description	Default
searchQueries	array	Keywords to search. Each is scraped separately and tagged. Required.	–
type	string	video, channel, playlist, movie, any.	video
sortBy	string	relevance, date, views, rating.	relevance
uploadDate	string	any, hour, today, week, month, year (videos only).	any
duration	string	any, short (<4m), medium (4–20m), long (>20m) (videos only).	any
maxResultsPerQuery	integer	Cap per query. 0 = unlimited.	100
maxResults	integer	Global cap across all queries. 0 = unlimited.	0

📤 Output

One structured row per search result. Here is a trimmed sample record:

{
  "resultType": "video",
  "query": "lofi hip hop",
  "title": "Best of lofi hip hop 2021 ✨",
  "viewCount": 54877621,
  "duration": "6:10:58",
  "durationSeconds": 22258,
  "publishedTime": "4 years ago",
  "channelTitle": "Lofi Girl",
  "channelId": "UCSJ4gkVC6NrvII8umztf0Ow",
  "descriptionSnippet": "The best lofi hip hop mix to relax / study to…",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n61ULEU7CO0",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-06T12:00:00.000Z"
}

💡 Use cases

• Trend & market research — pull the top videos for a topic by view count to see what wins.
• Content strategy & video SEO — analyze titles, durations and recency for a keyword you want to rank for.
• Creator & influencer discovery — search type: channel to surface creators in a niche.
• Competitive monitoring — track the freshest uploads for a keyword with the uploadDate filter.
• Dataset building & pipelines — assemble keyword-based video sets, then pass videoIds into the Comments or Video Details scrapers.
• Ad & campaign research — find the highest-performing content around a product or theme.

👥 Who uses it

Content strategists & video-SEO specialists · social-media and market researchers · influencer-marketing agencies · competitive-intelligence analysts · data scientists building keyword-based video datasets · founders tracking topic momentum.

💰 Pricing

This Actor runs on a simple pay-per-result model — you pay for the results you extract, with no separate Apify platform fees to calculate and no proxy or YouTube API costs. Try it on the free tier first, then scale up. See the Pricing tab on this page for the current rate.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a YouTube API key to scrape search results? No — no key, no login, and no Google API quota (the official API caps at ~100 searches/day). Only an Apify account is needed.

Is this a YouTube search API alternative? Yes. It works as a YouTube search API alternative — you scrape YouTube without an API key, login or Google quota, and still get the same filters and pagination as the site.

Can I get more than the first page of results? Yes — it paginates automatically up to YouTube's result ceiling or your maxResultsPerQuery.

Can I scrape YouTube channels or playlists by keyword? Yes — set type to channel or playlist. You can also filter videos by upload date and duration like YouTube's own filters.

How do I get the top YouTube videos for a keyword by view count? Enter your keyword in searchQueries and set sortBy to views; the scraper paginates the results and returns each video with its exact view count for ranking.

Can I use this as a YouTube keyword scraper for data extraction? Yes — feed many keywords at once and build a structured YouTube search-results dataset in one run.

Can I scrape YouTube search without coding? Yes — enter keywords, click Start, and download CSV, Excel or JSON.

How do I export YouTube search results to CSV or JSON? Run your keywords, then export the dataset to CSV, JSON or Excel — or pull it via the Apify API. Every result field is included.

Is scraping YouTube search legal? The Actor collects only public search-result data. Use it in line with YouTube's Terms and applicable laws.

Note: YouTube caps total results per query (typically a few hundred), just like the website. Live streams may lack view/duration values until they end, and relative dates ("4 years ago") are what search exposes — use scrapedAt as the reference.

🔗 The complete YouTube & social toolkit by logiover

Pair the search scraper with the rest of the YouTube and social-intelligence suite:

Actor	What it does
YouTube Channel Scraper	A channel's full video catalog and stats
YouTube Video Details Scraper	Exact views, likes, tags and full metadata
YouTube Comments Scraper	All comments for a video
YouTube Influencer Discovery Scraper	Creators, engagement & emails by niche
YouTube Creator Email Finder	Creator business emails for outreach
TikTok Hashtag Video Scraper	Trending TikTok videos by hashtag/keyword
TikTok Sound & Music Scraper	Videos by song and their creators
Twitch Scraper	Streams, channels and metadata
Instagram Media Downloader	Download Instagram media and metadata
Reddit Search Scraper	Search Reddit posts and comments by keyword
Hacker News Search Scraper	Search HN stories and comments
IMDb Scraper	Movies, TV, ratings, reviews and cast

👉 Browse all logiover scrapers on Apify Store — 180+ actors across real estate, jobs, crypto, social media & B2B data.

⏰ Scheduling & integration

Schedule this Actor on Apify with uploadDate: "week" to track the freshest videos for your keywords daily or weekly. Export results to JSON, CSV or Excel, sync to Google Sheets, or push to your database, BI tools and webhooks through the Apify API. Connect it to Make, n8n or Zapier, and feed the videoIds straight into your content-analytics pipeline.

⭐ Support & feedback

Need search within a specific channel, region/language targeting, or live-only results? Open an issue on the Issues tab — response is usually fast. If this Actor saves you time, a ★★★★★ review on the Store page genuinely helps and is hugely appreciated. 🙏

⚖️ Legal

This Actor collects only publicly available YouTube search-result data and is intended for legitimate research, analytics and content-intelligence use. You are responsible for complying with YouTube's Terms of Service and any applicable local laws.

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📝 Changelog

2026-07-06

• ✨ README overhaul: added shields badges, a green "why" callout, a fuller output sample and field reference (durationSeconds, channelId, descriptionSnippet), extra ready-to-run example scenarios, a YouTube/social cross-promo grid, and a clearer quick-start.

2026-07-01

• Maintenance pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data and confirmed successful runs within the 5-minute quality window on the default input.
• Sharpened Store metadata (SEO title & description) and expanded the FAQ with high-intent, long-tail questions for easier discovery in Google and Apify Store search.
• Added ready-to-run example tasks that cover common real-world use cases.

2026-06-15

• Reliability pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data with real-world inputs. Routine maintenance build.

2026-06-07

• Docs: added coverage for using this as a YouTube search API alternative, exporting YouTube search results to CSV/JSON, and the YouTube keyword scraper / data extraction use case.

2026-06-05

• 🛡️ Reliability fix: results are no longer dropped by strict output validation — runs now complete cleanly even at high volume (thousands of results).
• ⚡ Stability & performance hardening; fresh rebuild.

2026-06-04

• Verified live & refreshed build — reliability/maintenance pass.