YouTube Channel Intelligence & Transcript Analyzer

Turn any YouTube channel into a strategy brief. Give this Actor a channel URL and it pulls the recent videos, extracts their transcripts, writes a concise AI summary of each, and — the part nobody else does — synthesizes one cross-video intelligence report for the whole channel: the topics it really covers, the title and hook patterns that recur, what its top-performing videos share, and where the content gaps are.

Most YouTube tools hand you 500 rows of raw transcript. This one hands you the memo.

Unofficial. This Actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to YouTube or Google. It processes publicly available video data only.

What you get

• Per-video rows — title, URL, channel, publish date, duration, view count, status, full transcript, and (optional) an AI summary of the key points.
• A channel report row — a synthesized strategy analysis across all analyzed videos.

Features

• Analyze one channel or many in a single run
• Full transcript extraction (public captions), cleaned and de-duplicated
• Concise per-video AI summaries — the concrete methods, tools, and claims, no filler
• Cross-video channel intelligence report: topic clusters, hook/title patterns, top-performer commonalities, upload cadence, content gaps, and a one-line positioning read
• Typed, structured output with separate Videos and Channel reports views
• Fails gracefully per video (age-restricted, no captions, removed) — one bad video never sinks the run

Use cases

• Competitor research — read a rival channel's whole strategy in one run
• Content planning — find the gaps and the patterns that win in your niche
• Creator due diligence — brief yourself on any channel before a collab or sponsorship
• Research & trend tracking — turn a channel's back-catalog into searchable notes
• Agent workflows — call it from Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client to feed channel intelligence into a larger pipeline

Input

Field	Type	Description
channelUrls	array (required)	One or more channel URLs, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/@channelname
maxVideos	integer	Recent videos to analyze per channel (default 10)
includeSummaries	boolean	Add an AI summary to each video (default true)
includeChannelReport	boolean	Generate the cross-video report per channel (default true)
llmApiKey	secret string	Optional — bring your own Anthropic key to run the AI at cost

{
  "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@anthropic-ai"],
  "maxVideos": 10,
  "includeSummaries": true,
  "includeChannelReport": true
}

Output

Video row:

{
  "type": "video",
  "channel": "Anthropic",
  "title": "The different levels of how Claude thinks",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...",
  "publishedDate": "2026-07-06",
  "durationMinutes": 5.5,
  "viewCount": 280588,
  "status": "ok",
  "summary": "- ...\n- ...",
  "transcript": "Think of the mind like an ocean..."
}

Channel report row:

{
  "type": "channelReport",
  "channel": "Anthropic",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@anthropic-ai",
  "videosAnalyzed": 10,
  "report": "1) Core topics... 2) Title/hook patterns... 3) Top videos share..."
}

Pricing (pay per event)

You pay only for what the run produces:

Event	Price
Transcript extracted	$0.003 / video
Video summarized	$0.04 / video
Channel report generated	$1.50 / channel

A typical 10-video run with summaries and a report costs about $1.93. Platform usage (compute, proxy) is billed to your account at Apify's standard rates. You are charged only for work that succeeds.

How to use

1. Paste one or more channel URLs into channelUrls.
2. Set maxVideos (higher = deeper report, more cost).
3. Run. Read the Channel reports view for the strategy memo; the Videos view for the per-video detail and transcripts.
4. Calling from an AI agent? The Actor is exposed via Apify's MCP server — your agent can discover it, read this schema, and call it directly.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause / fix
A video shows status: no_captions	That video has no public captions; nothing to transcribe.
A video shows status: age_restricted or blocked	Not publicly accessible without sign-in; skipped by design.
Summaries/report are empty	No AI key available for that run — transcripts still returned.
Run returns few videos	The channel has fewer public uploads than maxVideos.

FAQ

Is this legal? The Actor processes only publicly available video pages and their public captions, and produces transformative analysis. It does not access private, paid, or login-walled content. You are responsible for how you use the output.

Is this affiliated with YouTube? No. It is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to YouTube or Google.

Can AI agents call this? Yes — it's available through the Apify MCP server with typed input and output schemas.