YouTube Channel Search Scraper

🔎 YouTube channel search scraper for keyword discovery

YouTube Channel Search Scraper finds public YouTube channels from search keywords and exports one clean row per discovered channel. Add keywords such as coffee roasting, indie game dev, or your niche, then get channel IDs, handles, subscriber counts, video counts, descriptions, source-video evidence, public links, and scrape metadata.

Use this Actor when you need to turn manual YouTube searching into a repeatable channel list for creator research, influencer discovery, competitor mapping, market research, outreach prep, or content planning. You do not need YouTube cookies, a login, or a YouTube API key.

For a small first run, keep the prefilled coffee roasting keyword and the default limit of 25 channels. The Actor searches YouTube results, checks the channel filter when selected, enriches channels from their public About pages, and saves accepted channels to the dataset during the run.

✅ What this Actor does

• Finds YouTube channels from one or more search keywords.
• Accepts typed keywords, pasted keyword lists, and uploaded TXT or CSV files.
• Can discover channels from video search results, YouTube's channel filter, or both.
• Saves one dataset item per discovered channel.
• Adds source evidence, including the video that exposed a channel when it was found through video results.
• Adds public channel details such as channel ID, handle, URL, title, description, subscribers, videos, total views, country, avatar, banner, tabs, RSS URL, and external links when YouTube exposes them.
• Supports optional cleanup filters for minimum subscribers, minimum videos, and verified channels.
• Can dedupe channels across multiple search terms.
• Works with Apify exports, API access, schedules, webhooks, and integrations.

📦 Data you can export

Each output row represents one discovered YouTube channel. Depending on what YouTube shows publicly, rows can include:

• searchTerm, rank, discoverySource, and sourceResultPosition
• channelId, channelHandle, channelUrl, and channelTitle
• channelDescription, subscriberCount, videoCount, and totalViews
• country, createdAtText, and isVerified
• thumbnailUrl, avatarUrl, bannerUrl, tabs, rssUrl, and externalLinks
• sourceVideoId, sourceVideoTitle, sourceVideoUrl, publish text, and view-count text
• languageHint, countryHint, scrapedAt, and status

You can export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, or HTML, or read it through the Apify API.

👥 Common use cases

• Build niche YouTube creator lists from topics, products, and audience interests.
• Find channels for influencer research before checking fit, quality, or contact details.
• Map competitor channels around a market or content category.
• Collect source-video evidence that explains why a channel matched a keyword.
• Prepare repeatable channel discovery runs for scheduled reports or internal tools.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open the Actor and keep the prefilled coffee roasting keyword for a quick test.
2. Choose how many channels to save per search term.
3. Keep discovery mode on Video results and channel filter for broad coverage.
4. Optionally add filters such as minimum subscribers or verified channels only.
5. Start the run and export the dataset when it finishes.

For larger batches, paste one keyword per line in Search terms as text or upload a TXT/CSV file. CSV files can use a searchTerm, term, query, keyword, or keywords column.

⚙️ Input options

• Search terms: the main keywords to search on YouTube.
• Search terms as text: optional pasted list for larger keyword batches.
• Search term files: optional TXT or CSV uploads.
• Channels per search term: result limit for each keyword.
• Total channels: maximum rows across the whole run.
• Discovery mode: video results, channel filter, or both.
• Dedupe across search terms: save the same channel once when several keywords find it.
• Filters: minimum subscribers, minimum videos, and verified-only mode.
• Raw result: optional raw YouTube search result for debugging or custom parsing.
• Page language and country: YouTube locale hints for search result pages.

🧾 Example output

{
  "searchTerm": "coffee roasting",
  "rank": 1,
  "discoverySource": "video_results",
  "channelId": "UCMb0O2CdPBNi-QqPk5T3gsQ",
  "channelHandle": "@jameshoffmann",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@jameshoffmann",
  "channelTitle": "James Hoffmann",
  "subscriberCount": 2530000,
  "videoCount": 401,
  "sourceVideoId": "N6BJVM5tvnw",
  "sourceVideoTitle": "Coffee Roasting Explained",
  "sourceVideoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6BJVM5tvnw",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-01T16:00:00.000Z",
  "status": "ok"
}

💳 Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing. You are charged for each public YouTube channel saved to the dataset. Runs that find no channels do not save placeholder rows.

⚠️ Limits and caveats

• The Actor collects public YouTube channel data only.
• It does not collect private analytics, hidden emails, comments, transcripts, or full video datasets.
• Subscriber counts can be approximate when YouTube shows abbreviated values such as 19.7K.
• Some fields are null when YouTube does not expose them for a channel or search result.
• Unsupported, unavailable, or blocked search results are reported in logs instead of saved as fake rows.

❓ FAQ

🔑 Do I need a YouTube API key?

No. The Actor is designed for public YouTube pages and does not ask for a YouTube API key, login, or cookies.

📚 Can it find channels from many keywords?

Yes. Add keywords in the list field, paste them as text, or upload TXT/CSV files. Use the total channel limit to keep larger runs bounded.

🎥 Does it return videos too?

It returns source-video evidence when a video search result exposed the channel. It does not scrape a full video list for each channel. Use YouTube Channel Scraper for known-channel video rows.

📝 Changelog

• 0.1: Initial release.

🆘 Support

For issues, questions, or feature requests, file a ticket and I'll fix or implement it in less than 24h 🫡

🔗 Other actors

• YouTube Channel Scraper ↗ - Scrape profiles and video rows from known YouTube channels.
• YouTube Channel Statistics Scraper ↗ - Export subscriber, view, and video counts for known channels.
• TikTok Keywords Discovery Tool ↗ - Collect TikTok autocomplete keyword suggestions for content research.
• Reddit Comments Search Scraper ↗ - Search public Reddit comments by keyword, subreddit, and freshness.
• Twitter Scraper ↗ - Search public X/Twitter posts and trending topics.

Made with ❤️ by Maxime Dupré