YouTube Channel & Video Scraper: Search, Stats & Metadata

Collect YouTube video data at scale: search results, a channel's uploads, playlists or specific videos, each returned with the exact view count, likes, publish date, length, tags, description, thumbnail and the channel's subscriber count. One row per video, ready for CSV, JSON or Excel.

Use it for influencer and competitor research, trend and keyword tracking, content calendars, dataset building and AI pipelines. Pair it with the YouTube Transcript Scraper when you also need what is said in the videos.

What you get

Field	Description
videoId, url, title, description	Video identity and text
channelName, channelId, channelUrl, channelSubscribers	Channel and its subscriber count
publishDate, lengthSeconds	When it was published and how long it is
viewCount, likeCount	Exact views, and likes when public
category, tags, thumbnailUrl, hasCaptions, isLive	Extra metadata
sourceType, source, rank	Which query, channel or playlist found it and its position
status	ok, unavailable or error

{
  "status": "ok",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
  "channelName": "Rick Astley",
  "channelSubscribers": 4200000,
  "publishDate": "2009-10-25",
  "viewCount": 1600000000,
  "sourceType": "search",
  "source": "never gonna give you up",
  "rank": 1
}

(Shortened, illustrative values.)

Input

Field	Default	Notes
searchQueries	none	Search terms; choose the sort with searchSort (relevance, date, views, rating)
channels	none	Channel URLs, ids or @handles; returns uploads newest first
playlists	none	Playlist URLs or ids
videos	none	Individual video URLs or ids
maxVideosPerSource	30	Limit for each query, channel and playlist
minViews	0	Skip videos below this view count (skipped videos are free)
includeDescription, includeChannelInfo	true	Turn off to speed up and slim output

{ "searchQueries": ["MCP server tutorial"], "channels": ["@fireship"], "maxVideosPerSource": 50, "searchSort": "date", "minViews": 10000 }

At least one of searchQueries, channels, playlists or videos is required.

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price
Video scraped	$0.003 per video
Actor start	$0.00005 per run

That is $3 per 1,000 videos; 200 videos cost about $0.60. Unavailable videos and videos skipped by minViews are not charged. Set a maximum cost per run in the Apify console.

Why it is reliable

YouTube blocks most datacenter traffic. This Actor uses residential proxies by default, keeps one IP per video, rotates and retries on bot checks, then makes a slower second pass for anything throttled, so you get a status for every video instead of silent gaps.

Limits

• Likes are only returned when the creator shows them. Subscriber counts are the rounded figures YouTube displays.
• Search and channel listings return what YouTube serves to anonymous visitors; very deep results may be capped by YouTube.
• Private, deleted and age-restricted videos return unavailable.
• Respect YouTube's terms and applicable law when using the data.

FAQ

Can I scrape a whole channel? Yes: pass the channel and raise maxVideosPerSource.

Can I find only popular videos? Use searchSort: "views" and minViews.

Do you return comments? Not in this Actor. It focuses on video and channel metadata.

Something broke? Open an issue from the Issues tab with the run URL and your input.

More from Neon Innovation Lab

• YouTube Transcript Scraper: transcripts with timestamps for videos, playlists and channels.
• AI Web Search & RAG Scraper: live web search results as clean Markdown for LLM prompts.
• App Store & Google Play Reviews Scraper: reviews for many apps and countries in one run.
• Google Maps Leads Scraper: businesses from Google Maps with phones, websites and emails found on their sites.