YouTube Comments Scraper

Extract every comment and reply from any YouTube video — author, likes, reply counts, timestamps, pinned and hearted flags — as clean, structured rows you can export to JSON, CSV or Excel. No login, no browser, no cookies to supply.

What does YouTube Comments Scraper do?

This Actor collects public comments and their replies from any YouTube video: regular videos, Shorts, and past live streams. For each comment you get the full text, the author's handle and channel link, like count, reply count, relative publish time, and whether the comment is pinned, verified, or hearted by the creator.

It is built for speed. A purpose-built extraction path pulls comments directly in structured form — no headless browser, no page rendering — so a typical run returns hundreds of comments in seconds instead of minutes, at a fraction of the compute cost.

Running on the Apify platform means you also get scheduling, a REST API, webhooks, ready-made integrations (Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make), and automatic retries — so comment collection can run on autopilot.

Why use YouTube Comments Scraper?

• Audience research — find out what your viewers actually ask for, in their own words.
• Sentiment & brand monitoring — track how people react to a launch, a review, or a competitor's video.
• Content ideas — the most-liked comments on a popular video are a ranked list of what your audience cares about.
• Community management — pull every comment on your latest upload into a spreadsheet and triage replies.
• Creator & influencer vetting — check whether engagement looks organic before you spend on a placement.
• Academic & market research — build large, structured comment datasets without writing a scraper.
• Training data — collect real-world conversational text at scale.

How to use YouTube Comments Scraper

1. Click Try for free / open the Actor in Apify Console.
2. Paste one or more YouTube video links into YouTube Videos. Full URLs, Shorts links, youtu.be links, or bare video IDs all work.
3. Set Max Top-Level Comments per Video — start with 100 to see the shape of the data.
4. Choose Top comments or Newest first, and decide whether you want replies included.
5. Click Start and watch the results fill the Output tab.
6. Export to JSON, CSV, Excel, or pull the results from the API.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
videoUrls	array	—	Video URLs or IDs. Watch, Shorts, live and youtu.be links accepted.
maxComments	integer	100	Top-level comments per video. 0 = unlimited.
maxPages	integer	0	Comment pages per video (~20 comments per page). 0 = no page limit.
sortBy	string	top	top (most engaged) or newest (most recent first).
includeReplies	boolean	true	Also collect replies under each comment.
maxRepliesPerThread	integer	10	Replies per comment thread. 0 = unlimited.
proxyConfiguration	object	disabled	Optional. Only needed for very large jobs.

{
    "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
        "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/abcdefghijk"
    ],
    "maxComments": 500,
    "maxPages": 0,
    "sortBy": "newest",
    "includeReplies": true,
    "maxRepliesPerThread": 10
}

Output

Every result is a flat row, ready for a spreadsheet. You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

One video_summary row per video:

{
    "entityType": "video_summary",
    "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "videoTitle": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
    "channelName": "Rick Astley",
    "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
    "totalComments": 2454657,
    "sortedBy": "top",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-08-20T18:33:39.331463+00:00"
}

One comment row per comment and per reply:

{
    "entityType": "comment",
    "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "videoTitle": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
    "commentId": "Ugzge340dBgB75hWBm54AaABAg",
    "commentUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&lc=Ugzge340dBgB75hWBm54AaABAg",
    "text": "can confirm: he never gave us up",
    "author": "@YouTube",
    "authorChannelId": "UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ",
    "authorChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@YouTube",
    "authorAvatar": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/3s6evpq...=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
    "isVerified": true,
    "isChannelOwner": false,
    "publishedTime": "1 year ago",
    "likeCount": 303000,
    "likeCountText": "303K",
    "replyCount": 1000,
    "isPinned": true,
    "pinnedBy": "Pinned by @RickAstleyYT",
    "heartedByCreator": true,
    "replyLevel": 0,
    "parentCommentId": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-08-20T18:33:39.331555+00:00"
}

Data fields

Field	Description
text	Full comment text
author	Author handle, e.g. @YouTube
authorChannelId / authorChannelUrl	Author's channel ID and link
authorAvatar	Author profile image URL
isVerified	Author has a verified channel
isChannelOwner	Comment was written by the video's own channel
publishedTime	Relative publish time as shown on YouTube
likeCount / likeCountText	Likes as a number and as displayed (303K)
replyCount	Replies on the thread
isPinned / pinnedBy	Pinned comment flag and the pinning creator
heartedByCreator	Creator gave the comment a heart
replyLevel	0 for a top-level comment, 1 for a reply
parentCommentId	Parent comment ID for replies
commentUrl	Direct link that opens the comment on YouTube

Dataset views

• Comments — the default table: text, author, likes, replies, timestamps.
• Authors — author-centric columns for outreach and engagement analysis.
• Videos — one row per video with total comment count and any errors.

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube comments?

You are charged per result, and every comment, reply, and video summary is one result.

Job	Results	Notes
1 video, 100 comments, no replies	~101	Quick sample of a video's reaction
1 video, 500 comments + 10 replies each	up to ~5,500	Deep dive on one upload
10 videos, 200 comments each, no replies	~2,010	Channel-wide sweep

These levers keep the bill exactly where you want it:

• maxComments caps top-level comments per video.
• maxPages caps how deep the Actor pages into a video's comment list — whichever limit is reached first stops that video.
• maxRepliesPerThread caps replies collected under each comment.
• includeReplies: false removes replies entirely — usually the biggest share of results.

Replies are billed like comments: each reply is its own row, linked to its comment through parentCommentId.

Because the Actor uses no browser, compute cost per result is very low.

Tips

• Use Newest first for monitoring runs on a schedule, and Top comments for research on older videos.
• Turn replies off for a first pass, then re-run with replies only on the videos that matter.
• maxComments: 0 means unlimited — on a video with millions of comments that run will take a long time and produce a very large dataset. Set a cap unless you truly want everything.
• Schedule a daily run on your own uploads and pipe the output into Google Sheets or Slack for instant community alerts.
• No proxy is needed for normal use. Only enable it if you run unusually large jobs.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube account or API key? No. The Actor works with public data only and needs no login, cookies, or API quota.

Does it get around the YouTube Data API quota? It does not use the official API at all, so daily quota limits do not apply to your runs.

Can it scrape comments on Shorts and live streams? Yes. Shorts, regular videos, and past live streams with comments enabled all work.

Why is likeCount a round number like 303000? YouTube itself displays abbreviated like counts (303K) on comments. likeCountText keeps the original display value, and likeCount is its numeric form.

What happens if a video has comments disabled? That video gets a single error row explaining it, and the run continues with the remaining videos.

Is scraping YouTube comments legal? This Actor collects only publicly visible information. You are responsible for how you use the data — in particular, take care with personal data and follow GDPR/CCPA and YouTube's Terms of Service. Do not use the output for spam or harassment.

Support

Found a bug or need an extra field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Custom scraping solutions are available on request.