YouTube Scraper Pro – Search, Channels, Videos & Shorts

Scrape YouTube search results, channels, playlists and single videos into clean JSON, CSV or Excel: title, views, likes, comment count, channel subscribers, full description, tags, duration and exact publish date. Shorts included. No login, no cookies, no YouTube API key and no quotas.

From $1 per 1,000 videos ($1.50 per 1,000 with full details) – duplicates and failed videos are never charged.

What can you do with YouTube data?

• Market and competitor research – see which videos, topics and channels win in your niche and how fast they grow.
• Influencer and creator discovery – find channels by keyword with their subscribers, views and engagement.
• Content strategy and YouTube SEO – study titles, tags, descriptions, durations and upload times of top-ranking videos.
• Trend monitoring – schedule searches sorted by upload date to catch new videos on any topic every day.
• Lead generation – build lists of creators and brands active on a topic.
• AI and data projects – collect large structured video datasets; pair with transcripts and comments for full context.

How to scrape YouTube

1. Enter search terms (like typing into the YouTube search box) and/or paste video, Shorts, channel or playlist URLs.
2. Set how many videos you want per search and per channel, and choose filters: sort by date, views or rating; upload date; duration; HD, 4K, subtitles, Creative Commons or live.
3. Keep Full video details on for likes, comment count, subscribers, full description, tags and exact publish dates – or turn it off for the cheapest, fastest lists.
4. Click Start and download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or get them through the API.

Why this scraper?

	YouTube Scraper Pro
Price	$1 per 1,000 videos, $1.50 with full details – no monthly fee
Inputs	Search terms with filters, videos, Shorts, channels (@handle, /channel/, /c/, /user/) and playlists – in one run
Shorts	Included and flagged with is_short; channel Shorts listed separately so you can include or skip them
Engagement	Views, likes, comment count and channel subscribers per video
Reliability	Uses YouTube's own app endpoints, retries with a fresh session and proxy IP, switches to residential IPs automatically when needed
Fair billing	Each video_id is charged once; failed videos are not charged; details are only charged when they were fetched
Cost control	maxTotalItems + Apify's Maximum cost per run – the scraper stops cleanly at the limit

Input

{
  "searchQueries": ["web scraping tutorial", "best budget phone 2026"],
  "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@TED", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 50,
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 50,
  "includeDetails": true,
  "includeShorts": true,
  "sortBy": "date",
  "uploadDate": "week",
  "duration": "any",
  "features": ["subtitles"]
}

• searchQueries – one search per line.
• startUrls – videos, Shorts, channels and playlists. Channels return their newest videos (long videos and Shorts).
• sortBy – relevance, date, views or rating (search only).
• uploadDate – any, hour, today, week, month, year (search only).
• duration – any, short (under 4 min), medium (4-20 min), long (over 20 min) (search only).
• features – hd, 4k, subtitles, creative_commons, live (search only).
• includeDetails – full details per video (+$0.0005 per video).
• maxTotalItems – hard limit for the whole run.

Output

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "channel_name": "Rick Astley",
  "channel_id": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "channel_url": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "channel_subscribers": 4550000,
  "channel_subscribers_text": "4.55M subscribers",
  "view_count": 1831486462,
  "like_count": 19491731,
  "comment_count": 2400000,
  "duration_seconds": 213,
  "published_at": "2009-10-24T00:00:00.000Z",
  "published_at_text": "Oct 24, 2009",
  "is_short": false,
  "is_live": false,
  "description": "The official video for “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley...",
  "keywords": ["rick astley", "never gonna give you up"],
  "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "source": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "source_type": "video",
  "rank": 1,
  "details": true,
  "scraped_at": "2026-10-29T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Without full details you still get title, channel, views, duration, relative publish date, description snippet (search), Shorts flag and thumbnail. rank is the position in the search results or channel list. Numbers YouTube shows rounded (like 4.4M) are converted to integers.

Run report

Every run saves RUN-SUMMARY in the key-value store: sources processed, videos returned, details fetched, and a list of searches or URLs that failed with the reason.

Pricing

Pay-per-event, no monthly rental:

• Video – $0.001 per unique video = $1 per 1,000.
• Full video details – $0.0005 per video, only when details were fetched successfully.

Example: 1,000 videos with full details = $1.50. Duplicates and failed videos are free. Set Maximum cost per run and the scraper stops cleanly at your budget.

Use it from code, automations and AI agents

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("muarafa/youtube-scraper-pro").call(run_input={
    "searchQueries": ["ai agents tutorial"],
    "maxResultsPerQuery": 100,
    "sortBy": "views",
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["title"], item["view_count"], item["like_count"])

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('muarafa/youtube-scraper-pro').call({
    startUrls: ['https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd'],
    maxVideosPerChannel: 100,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.length, 'videos');

No-code: works with n8n, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets, Airbyte and webhooks through the Apify integrations. Schedule a search sorted by upload date to get new videos on any topic every day.

AI agents: available as a tool through the Apify MCP server, so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other MCP clients can search YouTube on demand.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key or a Google account? No. The scraper reads public data with no login, cookies or API key, so there are no YouTube Data API quotas.

Can I scrape YouTube Shorts? Yes – Shorts appear in search and channel results with is_short: true, and you can paste Shorts URLs directly. Turn off Include Shorts to skip them.

Can I scrape all videos of a channel? Yes – paste the channel URL and set Max videos per channel (up to 5,000).

How many results can one search return? Up to 1,000 per search term; YouTube itself stops serving results after several hundred for most queries. Use several related search terms or filters for more.

Why are some likes or comment counts empty? Some creators hide likes or turn comments off. Those fields are null instead of a wrong number.

How much does it cost to scrape 10,000 YouTube videos? $10, or $15 with full details. Apify's free plan includes monthly credit to try it.

Is scraping YouTube legal? The scraper only collects publicly available data. Personal data is protected by laws such as GDPR – only scrape and use it for legitimate purposes, and consult a lawyer if unsure.

Found a video or search that fails? Open an issue with the input – we fix reports fast.

More tools by the same developer

• YouTube Comments Scraper Pro – comments and replies of videos, Shorts, playlists and channels, from $0.50 per 1,000.
• YouTube Transcript Scraper Pro – transcripts and subtitles of videos, playlists and channels in all languages.
• Facebook Ads Library Scraper Pro – Meta ads by keyword or page, with media, CTA, dates and spend.
• Google Trends Scraper Pro – interest over time, by region, related queries and topics, CSV export.