YouTube Video Details Scraper

YouTube Video Details Scraper - exact views, likes, dates, tags and chapters of any YouTube video

The YouTube Video Details Scraper returns every public fact about a YouTube video in one clean row. Paste video links and get the exact view count, exact likes, publish and upload date, category, tags, hashtags, chapters, duration and description.

Each row also carries the channel: name, handle, id, link, subscriber count and verified badge, plus flags such as live, unlisted, family-safe and Shorts-eligible.

No login, no Google account and no YouTube Data API key or quota. The YouTube Video Details Scraper reads what any logged-out visitor can see on the watch page.

What the YouTube Video Details Scraper does

For every URL, the YouTube Video Details Scraper loads the video's watch page, reads the video data YouTube puts into that page, and writes one row with all fields filled that YouTube publishes.

Watch links, youtu.be links, Shorts links, live links, mobile links and bare 11-character ids are all accepted. A video listed twice appears once in the dataset.

A video that cannot be read (deleted, private, wrong id) gets a clear log line instead of an empty row, and the run continues with the next URL.

Who uses the YouTube Video Details Scraper

Marketers and agencies who report on campaign videos and need exact views and likes, not rounded labels.

Researchers and data teams who build video datasets with dates, categories, tags and engagement for analysis.

Media monitors and rights holders who check titles, descriptions, availability and live status of many videos at once.

Developers who enrich their own video lists with metadata through the Apify API.

Input fields for the YouTube Video Details Scraper

Only startUrls is required, and the field keeps its name from earlier versions of the YouTube Video Details Scraper.

Field	Type	Default	Meaning
startUrls	array	2 example videos	Video URLs (watch, youtu.be, Shorts, live, m.youtube.com) or video ids
maxItems	integer	empty	Optional cap on the number of video rows
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify RESIDENTIAL, US	Proxy used for every request

Output of the YouTube Video Details Scraper

Every row of the YouTube Video Details Scraper has the same keys, so the dataset schema is stable across videos.

Field	Meaning
videoId, url, title, description	The video and its full description
viewCount	Exact views
likes, likesText	Exact likes and YouTube's label ("19M")
commentCountText, commentCount, commentsDisabled	Comment count as shown ("2.4M"), as a number, and whether comments are off
duration, durationSeconds	Length
publishDate, uploadDate	Exact timestamps with time zone
dateText, relativeDateText	Dates as shown ("Oct 24, 2009", "16 years ago")
category	YouTube category, e.g. Music, Education
keywords, hashtags	Creator tags and the hashtags above the title
chapters	Chapter titles with start second
channelName, channelId, channelUrl, channelHandle	The channel
channelSubscribers, channelSubscribersText, channelIsVerified	Channel size and badge
thumbnailUrl	Largest thumbnail
captionLanguages, hasAutoCaptions	Caption tracks available
isLiveContent, isLiveNow, isUnlisted, isPrivate, isFamilySafe, isShortsEligible, isPaid, allowRatings	Flags
availableCountriesCount	Number of countries the video is available in
playabilityStatus	YouTube's status, e.g. OK or UNPLAYABLE
inputUrl, scrapedAt	Run context and ISO timestamp

Export the YouTube Video Details Scraper dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel, XML or HTML, or read it through the Apify API.

Example row (shortened)

{"videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ", "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)", "viewCount": 1822436535, "likes": 19455094, "likesText": "19M", "commentCountText": "2.4M", "durationSeconds": 213, "publishDate": "2009-10-24T23:57:33-07:00", "category": "Music", "hashtags": ["#RickAstley", "#NeverGonnaGiveYouUp", "#OfficialMusicVideo"], "channelName": "Rick Astley", "channelHandle": "@RickAstleyYT", "channelSubscribers": 4550000, "channelIsVerified": true, "isFamilySafe": true}

How to run the YouTube Video Details Scraper

Open the YouTube Video Details Scraper, paste your video URLs into startUrls and press Start. Each row is saved as soon as its video is read.

There is nothing else to configure. For very long lists set maxItems to test with a few videos first.

Measured speed of the YouTube Video Details Scraper

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

• 2 videos in 3 seconds.
• 8 videos of different kinds (youtu.be, Shorts, bare id, mobile link, an ended live stream, a made-for-kids video) in 7 seconds.
• 12 of 12 real videos tested returned a complete row.

How the YouTube Video Details Scraper works

The YouTube Video Details Scraper loads the watch page exactly as a logged-out browser does and reads the page configuration and the video data embedded in it.

Exact likes come from the like button's own text ("like this video along with 215,124 other people"), exact views from the video record, dates and category from the page's metadata.

On some page loads YouTube embeds a "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" screen instead of the video data, while the rest of the page is normal. The YouTube Video Details Scraper then asks YouTube's player endpoint with that page's own context and gets the same data.

Nothing is hardcoded: client version, visitor data and the signature timestamp the player endpoint needs are all read from the page on every run.

YouTube Video Details Scraper limits, stated plainly

The YouTube Video Details Scraper reads public videos; unlisted videos were not part of our tests. Private, deleted and members-only videos have no public data, so they produce a log line, not a row.

Comment counts are YouTube's rounded label ("2.4M"). For the exact number of comments use the YouTube Comments Scraper, which reads the exact total from the comment header.

Subscriber counts are rounded by YouTube ("4.55M"); views and likes are exact.

Dislikes are not public on YouTube any more, so there is no dislike field.

chapters is empty when the creator added none, and hashtags is empty when the video has no hashtags above its title. Both are normal.

Live streams report what YouTube publishes: an ended 24/7 stream in our test reported UNPLAYABLE and a stream length of more than 33,000 hours, because it ran for years.

YouTube Video Details Scraper pricing

The YouTube Video Details 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. A video that fails produces no row, so it is not charged as a result.

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

Shorts, live streams and premieres

Shorts, ended live streams and regular uploads all went through the same YouTube Video Details Scraper flow in our tests. isShortsEligible, isLiveContent and isLiveNow tell them apart.

For a stream, durationSeconds is the length YouTube reports for it; for the ended 24/7 stream in our test that was the whole multi-year run.

Reading the date fields

publishDate and uploadDate come from the page's metadata as ISO timestamps with the time zone. In all 12 videos of our tests, the ended live stream included, both fields held exactly the same moment.

dateText is the date exactly as YouTube prints it under the video ("Oct 24, 2009"), and relativeDateText the "16 years ago" form. Use the timestamp for sorting and the texts for display.

Large lists

The YouTube Video Details Scraper reads videos one after another, at a polite pace. In our tests 8 videos took 7 seconds, roughly one second per video on a home connection.

For tens of thousands of videos, split the list over several runs and set maxItems on the first one to check the output before the big job. Smaller runs also finish sooner and are easier to retry.

Using the YouTube Video Details Scraper in a workflow

Schedule the YouTube Video Details Scraper on your campaign videos and you have a daily log of views and likes for every video, ready for a performance chart.

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

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

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("neuro-scraper/youtube-video-details-scraper").call(run_input={"startUrls": [{"url": "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ"}, {"url": "aircAruvnKk"}]})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["title"], item["viewCount"], item["likes"], item["publishDate"])

Tracking engagement over time

Run the YouTube Video Details Scraper every day on the same list. Views and likes per scrapedAt give you growth curves, and the like-to-view ratio shows how well a video lands with its audience.

Because videoId never changes, joining daily runs in a spreadsheet is one lookup.

Enriching search results

Run the YouTube Scraper of this family for your keywords, then pass its video URLs to the YouTube Video Details Scraper to add exact likes, publish dates, categories and tags to every search result.

That two-step flow gives you a keyword landscape with real engagement numbers instead of rounded labels.

Related scrapers

The YouTube Video Details 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 Comments Scraper	Comments and replies with exact totals
YouTube Transcript Scraper	Full transcripts with timestamps
YouTube Channel Scraper	Channel profile and videos
YouTube Playlist Scraper	Every video of a playlist
YouTube Shorts Scraper	Shorts of a channel or a search
YouTube Video Downloader	Video or audio files
Facebook Video Details Scraper	Details of public Facebook videos
TikTok Video Details Scraper	Stats of TikTok videos
Instagram Reels Scraper	Reels of public Instagram profiles
Facebook Reels Scraper	Reels of public Facebook pages

Leave a review

If the YouTube Video Details Scraper saved you time, please leave a star rating and a short review on the Actor page. Reviews help other users choose and tell me what to improve.

If a video did not work, open an issue with the run link.

Frequently asked questions

Does the YouTube Video Details Scraper need a YouTube API key?

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

Are the view and like counts exact?

Yes. The YouTube Video Details Scraper reads exact views from the video record and exact likes from the like button's text. In our test Rick Astley's video had 19,455,094 likes.

Does the YouTube Video Details Scraper work for Shorts?

Yes. Paste the Shorts URL. A Short in our test returned its exact views, likes, comment label, 31-second duration and publish date.

Can I get the dislike count?

No. YouTube stopped publishing dislikes, so no public scraper can return a real dislike count.

Why is the comment count rounded?

The watch page only shows a label such as "2.4M". For exact comment totals use the YouTube Comments Scraper, which reads them from the comment header.

Does the YouTube Video Details Scraper return chapters?

Yes. Every chapter comes with its title and start second. A lecture video in our test returned 12 chapters.

What happens with a deleted or private video?

The YouTube Video Details Scraper logs the reason YouTube gives, for example "This video is unavailable", and moves on. Failed videos are not charged as results.

Does the YouTube Video Details Scraper give the exact publish time?

Yes. publishDate and uploadDate are full timestamps with time zone, for example 2009-10-24T23:57:33-07:00, next to the date as YouTube prints it.

Which formats can I export to?

CSV, JSON, Excel, XML and HTML from the console, and the same data through the Apify API and integrations.

Do I need my own proxy for the YouTube Video Details Scraper?

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