YouTube Scraper

Apify Actor for scraping YouTube videos, channels, comments, and playlists. Uses YouTube's internal API (youtubei/v1) for fast, reliable data extraction with CheerioCrawler for page scraping and PlaywrightCrawler as fallback.

Features

• Search videos by keyword with pagination and type filtering (video, channel, playlist)
• Scrape video details: title, description, view/like/comment counts, upload date, duration, channel info, tags, category, thumbnails, chapters
• Scrape video comments with pagination: author, text, likes, reply count, published date, creator reply flag
• Scrape channel info: name, subscribers, video count, total views, description, joined date, country, social links
• Scrape channel video lists with sort options (newest, popular, oldest)
• Scrape playlist contents: all video titles, URLs, durations, and playlist metadata

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchKeywords	string[]	[]	Keywords to search YouTube for
videoUrls	string[]	[]	Direct video URLs to scrape details from
channelUrls	string[]	[]	Channel URLs to scrape info/videos from
playlistUrls	string[]	[]	Playlist URLs to scrape
scrapeComments	boolean	false	Scrape comments for each video
maxComments	integer	100	Max comments per video (0 = unlimited)
maxSearchResults	integer	50	Max results per search keyword (0 = unlimited)
maxChannelVideos	integer	50	Max videos per channel (0 = unlimited)
channelVideoSort	string	"newest"	Sort order: newest, popular, oldest
scrapeChannelInfo	boolean	true	Scrape channel metadata
scrapeChannelVideos	boolean	true	Scrape channel video list
searchType	string	"video"	Filter: video, channel, playlist, any
proxyConfiguration	object	null	Proxy settings
maxRetries	integer	3	Max retries for failed requests

Example Input

{
    "searchKeywords": ["web scraping tutorial"],
    "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"],
    "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"],
    "playlistUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeiKm4sgNOknGvNjby9efdf"],
    "scrapeComments": true,
    "maxComments": 50,
    "maxSearchResults": 20,
    "maxChannelVideos": 30,
    "channelVideoSort": "popular",
    "searchType": "video"
}

Output Examples

Search Result

{
    "type": "video",
    "videoId": "abc123",
    "title": "How to Web Scrape in 2024",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123",
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/abc123/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "duration": "12:34",
    "durationSeconds": 754,
    "viewCount": 150000,
    "channelName": "TechChannel",
    "publishedTimeText": "3 months ago",
    "descriptionSnippet": "Learn web scraping with Python...",
    "searchKeyword": "web scraping tutorial"
}

Video Detail

{
    "type": "videoDetail",
    "videoId": "abc123",
    "title": "How to Web Scrape in 2024",
    "description": "Full description text...",
    "viewCount": 150000,
    "likeCount": 5200,
    "commentCount": 340,
    "uploadDate": "2024-01-15",
    "duration": "12:34",
    "durationSeconds": 754,
    "channelName": "TechChannel",
    "channelId": "UCxxxxxxxx",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxxxxxxxx",
    "tags": ["web scraping", "python", "tutorial"],
    "category": "Science & Technology",
    "thumbnails": [],
    "chapters": [
        { "title": "Introduction", "startSeconds": 0 }
    ]
}

Comment

{
    "type": "comment",
    "commentId": "xyz789",
    "author": "UserName",
    "authorChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@UserName",
    "text": "Great tutorial, very helpful!",
    "likeCount": 15,
    "replyCount": 3,
    "publishedTimeText": "2 months ago",
    "isCreatorReply": false,
    "videoId": "abc123"
}

Channel Info

{
    "type": "channelInfo",
    "channelId": "UCxxxxxxxx",
    "channelName": "TechChannel",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxxxxxxxx",
    "description": "Channel description...",
    "subscriberCount": 1200000,
    "videoCount": 450,
    "totalViews": 250000000,
    "joinedDate": "Jan 15, 2018",
    "country": "United States",
    "socialLinks": [
        { "title": "Twitter", "url": "https://twitter.com/techchannel" }
    ]
}

Playlist Video

{
    "type": "playlistVideo",
    "videoId": "abc123",
    "title": "Playlist Video Title",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123",
    "duration": "8:45",
    "durationSeconds": 525,
    "channelName": "TechChannel",
    "index": 1,
    "playlistId": "PLxxxxxxxx"
}

Pricing

This Actor uses Pay-Per-Event pricing at $0.35 per 1,000 results ($0.00035 per result). Each scraped item (video, comment, channel info entry, playlist video) counts as one result.

Technical Details

• Uses YouTube's internal youtubei/v1 API for search, comments, channel browsing, and playlists
• Falls back to page scraping via CheerioCrawler for video detail extraction (extracts ytInitialData and ytInitialPlayerResponse)
• Uses PlaywrightCrawler as a secondary fallback when pages require JavaScript rendering
• Handles pagination via continuation tokens for all data types
• Built with Apify SDK v3 and Crawlee

Legal Notice

This Actor is intended for personal use, research, and legitimate business purposes. Ensure your use complies with YouTube's Terms of Service and applicable laws. The Actor does not bypass any authentication or access restrictions.