YouTube Channel Scraper

YouTube Channel Scraper - channel stats, about data and every video of a YouTube channel

The YouTube Channel Scraper turns any public YouTube channel into structured data. Paste channel URLs or @handles and get the channel profile plus the channel's videos, newest, most popular or oldest first.

The profile includes name, handle, subscribers, description, links, country, joined date, total views and the exact video count. Every video comes with title, URL, views, duration and upload time.

No login, no Google account, no YouTube Data API key or quota. The YouTube Channel Scraper reads what any logged-out visitor sees on the channel page and its About panel.

What the YouTube Channel Scraper does

For each channel, the YouTube Channel Scraper opens the Videos tab, reads the channel header and the About panel, and then pages through the channel's videos, thirty per page, until it reaches your limit.

Each video becomes one dataset row that also carries the channel's profile fields. One flat table, ready for a spreadsheet, with no joins needed.

Set maxVideos to 0 and the YouTube Channel Scraper returns just one profile row per channel, which is the fastest way to enrich a list of channels.

Who uses the YouTube Channel Scraper

Influencer marketing teams who vet creators by subscribers, total views, country and posting activity before they reach out.

Agencies and brands who benchmark competitors' channels and track what and how often they publish.

Analysts and investors who follow channel growth over time with scheduled runs.

Researchers who need a channel's complete video list with view counts for a study.

Input fields for the YouTube Channel Scraper

Only startUrls is required. The defaults return the 20 latest videos of each channel.

Field	Type	Default	Meaning
startUrls	array	@MrBeast	Channel URLs or handles: youtube.com/@handle, /channel/UC..., /c/name, /user/name, or just @handle
maxVideos	integer	20	Videos per channel; 0 = only the profile row
sortBy	select	latest	latest, popular or oldest - the channel's own sort buttons
maxItems	integer	empty	Optional cap on all rows of the run
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify RESIDENTIAL, US	Proxy used for every request

Output of the YouTube Channel Scraper

Each row of the YouTube Channel Scraper has the channel fields and, unless maxVideos is 0, the video fields.

Field	Meaning
channelId, channelName, channelHandle, channelUrl	Channel identity
channelSubscribers, channelSubscribersText	Subscribers as a number and as shown ("519M subscribers")
channelVideoCount	Exact number of videos, from the About panel
channelTotalViews	Exact lifetime views, from the About panel
channelCountry	Country, when the channel publishes one
channelJoinedDate	Date the channel was created
channelDescription	Full channel description
channelLinks	Links from the About panel: title and URL
channelKeywords	Channel keywords
channelAvatarUrl, channelBannerUrl	Images
channelIsVerified, channelIsFamilySafe	Badges and flags
channelHasBusinessEmail	The channel offers a business email (shown to signed-in users only)
channelRssUrl	The channel's RSS feed
videoId, url, title	The video
viewCount, viewCountText	Views as a number and as shown ("86M")
duration, durationSeconds	Length
publishedTimeText	Relative upload time ("13d ago")
thumbnailUrl, isLive	Thumbnail and live flag
position, sortedBy	Order of the video in the chosen sort
inputUrl, scrapedAt	Run context and ISO timestamp

Export the YouTube Channel Scraper dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel, XML or HTML, or fetch it through the Apify API.

Example row (shortened)

{"channelName": "MrBeast", "channelHandle": "@MrBeast", "channelSubscribers": 519000000, "channelVideoCount": 1004, "channelTotalViews": 141401695682, "channelCountry": "United States", "channelJoinedDate": "Feb 19, 2012", "videoId": "v9QtM6qnG50", "title": "I Built A City To Save Kids From Illegal Labor", "viewCount": 86000000, "duration": "19:03", "publishedTimeText": "13d ago", "position": 1, "sortedBy": "latest"}

How to run the YouTube Channel Scraper

Open the YouTube Channel Scraper, paste one or more channel URLs or @handles, set maxVideos, pick the order and press Start.

For a quick profile check of many channels, set maxVideos to 0. For a channel's full catalogue, set maxVideos higher than the channel's video count; the run stops when the channel has no more videos.

The order buttons work like on YouTube: latest for recent activity, popular for the all-time hits, oldest to see how the channel started.

Measured speed of the YouTube Channel Scraper

All numbers come from local test runs of the YouTube Channel Scraper on a home connection:

• 20 latest videos plus the full profile in 2 seconds.
• 75 most popular videos in 3-4 seconds, from 3 pages of 30.
• Three channels with 35 oldest videos each, 105 rows, in 8 seconds.
• One profile-only row in 2 seconds.

How the YouTube Channel Scraper works

The YouTube Channel Scraper loads the channel's Videos tab exactly as a logged-out browser does and reads the page configuration: client version, visitor data, language and region.

The About data comes from the channel header's own "more" link, and the sort buttons are the tab's own links. Channels with members-only videos show the sort options in a drop-down; both layouts were tested.

Further pages of videos come from YouTube's internal browse endpoint with the page's own context and the continuation token of each answer. Nothing is hardcoded, so YouTube releases do not silently break the YouTube Channel Scraper.

YouTube Channel Scraper limits, stated plainly

The YouTube Channel Scraper returns public data only. Members-only videos and private videos are not listed to logged-out visitors, so they are not in the dataset.

Subscriber counts are rounded by YouTube ("519M"). The YouTube Channel Scraper keeps YouTube's precision. Total views and the video count from the About panel are exact.

View counts on the Videos tab are short labels ("86M") turned into numbers, and upload times are relative. Use the YouTube Video Details Scraper for exact views and dates of single videos.

Business emails are hidden behind a sign-in on YouTube. The YouTube Channel Scraper only tells you whether a channel has one (channelHasBusinessEmail).

Country appears only when the channel publishes it; NASA, for example, does not.

The Videos tab lists long-form videos. Shorts and live streams have their own tabs; use the YouTube Shorts Scraper for Shorts.

YouTube Channel Scraper pricing

The YouTube Channel Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing: you pay per dataset row (event "result"), plus the Apify platform usage of your run. The run stops at your maxItems or at the charge limit you set.

Free-plan users get up to 30 rows per run, which is enough to test the YouTube Channel Scraper on real data. The current price per 1,000 results is on the Pricing tab.

Using the YouTube Channel Scraper in a workflow

Schedule the YouTube Channel Scraper weekly with maxVideos: 0 on your list of channels and you have a growth tracker for subscribers, total views and video counts.

Send the rows to Google Sheets, a CRM or a database through the Apify integrations, or through Make, Zapier and n8n. A webhook can trigger your own automation when the run finishes.

Developers call the YouTube Channel Scraper from Python with the Apify API client:

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("neuro-scraper/my-actor-11").call(run_input={"startUrls": [{"url": "@MrBeast"}, {"url": "@LofiGirl"}], "maxVideos": 0})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["channelName"], item["channelSubscribers"], item["channelTotalViews"])

Creator vetting with the YouTube Channel Scraper

Run the YouTube Channel Scraper on a shortlist of creators with maxVideos: 30. Average viewCount over the latest videos shows real reach far better than the subscriber number.

Check publishedTimeText of the latest video to see whether a channel is still active, and channelCountry to match your target market.

Reading the About fields

channelTotalViews is the lifetime view count of the whole channel, exactly as the About panel states it, for example 141,401,695,682 views for MrBeast in our test.

channelVideoCount is exact too (1,004 for the same channel), while the header shows a rounded label such as "1K videos". The YouTube Channel Scraper always prefers the exact About value.

channelLinks holds the links the creator lists on the About panel, with YouTube's redirect wrapper removed, so you get the real target URL of each website or social profile.

Tracking channel growth over time

Store each scheduled run of the YouTube Channel Scraper with its scrapedAt timestamp. Subscribers, total views and video count side by side across runs show the growth curve of every channel you follow.

Because channelId never changes, even when a creator renames the channel or changes the handle, it is the right key for joining runs.

A channel row with maxVideos: 0 takes two requests: the channel page and its About panel. That keeps large monitoring lists cheap and quick.

Going deeper than the channel page

The video URLs in a YouTube Channel Scraper dataset plug straight into the other scrapers of this family. Pass them to the comments scraper to hear what the audience says, or to the transcript scraper to get what was said in each video.

For exact likes, publish dates, tags and chapters of selected videos, send their URLs to the YouTube Video Details Scraper. All YouTube Actors of this family name the video id videoId, so their datasets join on it.

Related scrapers

The YouTube Channel Scraper is part of a family of YouTube and social media scrapers by the same developer.

Actor	What it extracts
YouTube Scraper	Search results and video data by keyword
YouTube Shorts Scraper	Shorts of a channel or a search
YouTube Playlist Scraper	Every video of a playlist
YouTube Video Details Scraper	Exact views, likes, dates and tags of a video
YouTube Comments Scraper	Comments and replies of any video
YouTube Transcript Scraper	Full transcripts with timestamps
YouTube Video Downloader	Video or audio files
TikTok Profile Scraper	Public TikTok profile data
Snapchat Profile Scraper	Public Snapchat profile data
Instagram Reels Scraper	Reels of public Instagram profiles
Facebook Reels Scraper	Reels of public Facebook pages

Leave a review

If the YouTube Channel Scraper saved you time, please leave a star rating and a short review on the Actor page. It helps other users choose and tells me what to build next.

If a channel did not work, open an issue with the run link and it will be fixed.

Frequently asked questions

Does the YouTube Channel Scraper need a YouTube API key?

No. The YouTube Channel Scraper does not use the YouTube Data API and has no quota. It reads the public channel page like a logged-out visitor.

Can the YouTube Channel Scraper get all videos of a channel?

Yes. Set maxVideos above the channel's video count. The YouTube Channel Scraper pages through the Videos tab, 30 videos per page, until the channel has no more.

Does the YouTube Channel Scraper return the exact subscriber count?

YouTube shows subscribers rounded, for example "519M subscribers", and so does the YouTube Channel Scraper. Total views and the number of videos come exact from the About panel.

Can I get a channel's email address?

No. YouTube hides business emails behind a sign-in and a captcha. The YouTube Channel Scraper tells you whether a channel has one in channelHasBusinessEmail.

Which channel URL formats work?

youtube.com/@handle, youtube.com/channel/UC..., youtube.com/c/name, youtube.com/user/name and a bare @handle. All five forms resolve to the same channel.

Can I sort the videos by popularity?

Yes. Set sortBy to popular or oldest. These are the channel's own sort buttons, so the order is exactly what YouTube shows.

Does the YouTube Channel Scraper include Shorts?

No, it reads the Videos tab. For Shorts use the YouTube Shorts Scraper, which reads the channel's Shorts tab the same way.

What happens with a channel that does not exist?

YouTube answers HTTP 404. The YouTube Channel Scraper logs "channel not found" for that URL and continues with the rest.

How many channels can I scrape in one run?

As many as you paste. The YouTube Channel Scraper handles them one after another; in our tests three channels with 35 videos each took 8 seconds in total.

Do I need my own proxy for the YouTube Channel Scraper?

No. The YouTube Channel Scraper uses Apify's residential proxy by default.