YouTube Similar Channels Finder - Lookalike Creators

For influencer marketers, agencies and YouTube creators: give a seed channel and get the YouTube channels YouTube itself recommends next to its videos, ranked, with each channel's id, name, @handle, URL, subscriber count, video count, country and the evidence - which of the seed's videos it appeared next to, which related video, and how high in the panel. Measured on 2026-09-21 (UTC): for @mkbhd, Mrwhosetheboss appeared next to 5 of the 5 videos read in 4 of 4 runs, and for @kurzgesagt Veritasium did in 3 of 3. Lower down the list the ranking moves from run to run, because YouTube's panel does. Use it to build creator shortlists, find competitors, or plan collaborations without guessing keywords.

Export as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Unofficial. Public data only. Not affiliated with YouTube or Google.

What you can use it for

• Influencer discovery: start from one creator who fits your campaign and get a ranked list of lookalike creators, then filter by subscriber range (for example 10,000 to 100,000 for micro-influencers).
• Competitor research: see which channels YouTube places next to your own videos, and how consistently.
• Collaboration planning: find channels whose audience YouTube already treats as overlapping with yours.
• Lead lists for agencies: one row per channel with id, handle, URL, subscribers and country, ready for a spreadsheet or CRM.

How it works

1. Enter seed channels as @handle, a channel URL, or a channel id (UC...) - any of the three works.
2. For each seed channel the Actor opens its public Videos tab and checks that the page is the channel you asked for (its own channel id).
3. It opens the seed's latest long-form videos (5 by default) and reads the related-videos panel YouTube shows next to each one, as it is served to a visitor who is not signed in. Every related video's channel is counted; for a collaboration video, every collaborating channel is counted. A video page is only used if YouTube names the seed as its owner. The seed channel itself is never returned.
4. Channels are ranked by how many of the seed's videos they appeared next to (sourceVideosWithChannel), then by how often (appearances), then by how high in the panel (bestPosition). The row carries up to 10 pieces of evidence so you can check each match yourself.
5. With includeChannelDetails on, each returned channel's public About page is read for its subscriber count, video count, total views, country, join date, verified badge and description.

Coverage, stated plainly: only the first screen of each page is read - about 30 videos on the Videos tab and 20 to 26 videos in each related panel. YouTube loads more through its internal API (/youtubei/), which YouTube's robots.txt disallows, so this Actor does not read it. It also never uses YouTube search (/results, disallowed too). Channels that only post Shorts get a free no-long-form-videos row: when measured, the related panel next to Shorts was not topical, so no ranking is made from it. The related panel is YouTube's recommendation at the moment of the run and can change between runs; channels that appeared next to only 1 video are weaker matches than those that appeared next to most of them - minSourceVideos keeps only the consistent ones.

Input

Field	Default	What it does
channels	example channel	Seed channels: @handle, channel URL (/@name, /channel/UC..., /c/..., /user/...) or channel id UC..., one per line (commas and spaces also separate entries). A repeated channel is read and charged once; the repeat gets a free duplicate row. Up to 200 per run.
videosPerChannel	5	How many of the seed's latest long-form videos to open (1-30). More videos give steadier rankings and more candidates.
maxSimilarChannels	20	At most this many similar channels per seed, best-ranked first (1-200).
minSourceVideos	1	Keep only channels that appeared next to at least this many of the seed's videos.
includeChannelDetails	true	Read each returned channel's About page for subscribers, video count, total views, country, join date, verified badge and description.
minSubscribers	none	Skip channels whose displayed subscriber count is lower. Skipped channels are not returned or charged; a channel whose count could not be read is kept.
maxSubscribers	none	Skip channels whose displayed subscriber count is higher.
maxResults	1000	Stop after this many rows in total; a free row says what was not returned.
useProxy	true	Retry a page through a proxy (datacenter first, then residential) only if YouTube answers it with a bot check or an error.

{
    "channels": ["@veritasium", "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd", "UCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q"],
    "videosPerChannel": 5,
    "maxSimilarChannels": 20,
    "minSourceVideos": 2,
    "maxSubscribers": 5000000
}

If you leave channels out, the example channel @mkbhd is read (it appears in inputChannel and the run log says so). An empty list is rejected with a free invalid-input row.

Output

One row per similar channel. This row was read on 2026-09-21 (UTC) in a production run for the seed @mkbhd (the evidence list is cut to 2 of its 10 entries here):

{
    "source": "youtube-similar-channels",
    "status": "ok",
    "inputChannel": "@mkbhd",
    "sourceChannelId": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
    "sourceChannelTitle": "Marques Brownlee",
    "sourceChannelHandle": "@mkbhd",
    "sourceChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
    "sourceVideosRead": 5,
    "rank": 1,
    "channelId": "UCMiJRAwDNSNzuYeN2uWa0pA",
    "channelTitle": "Mrwhosetheboss",
    "channelHandle": "@Mrwhosetheboss",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@Mrwhosetheboss",
    "sourceVideosWithChannel": 5,
    "sourceVideoShare": 1,
    "appearances": 13,
    "appearancesAsCollaborator": 5,
    "bestPosition": 2,
    "averagePosition": 14.5,
    "evidence": [
        {
            "sourceVideoId": "ohqxP8EEumo",
            "sourceVideoTitle": "iPhone 18 Pro Review: All About that Chip",
            "relatedVideoId": "n6hPB3Arr_M",
            "relatedVideoTitle": "iPhone 18 Pro Unboxing - This Needs Explaining",
            "position": 2
        },
        {
            "sourceVideoId": "ohqxP8EEumo",
            "sourceVideoTitle": "iPhone 18 Pro Review: All About that Chip",
            "relatedVideoId": "JstGCPsj9wg",
            "relatedVideoTitle": "How Tech Companies Lie to You.",
            "position": 9
        }
    ],
    "subscriberCount": 22900000,
    "subscriberCountText": "22.9M subscribers",
    "subscriberCountIsRounded": true,
    "videoCount": 1935,
    "totalViews": 9110530184,
    "joinedDate": "2011-04-20",
    "country": "United Kingdom",
    "isVerified": true,
    "description": "Let's become the Greatest Tech Community on the Planet 🌍 I'm Arun Maini and I'm on a mission to make the most FUN and USEFUL Tech videos on the Planet! 🙏",
    "channelDetailsStatus": "ok",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-21T11:57:21.240Z"
}

Field	Meaning
inputChannel, sourceChannel*	The seed as you typed it, and the channel YouTube confirmed for it.
sourceVideosRead	How many of the seed's video pages were used (a page YouTube did not serve, or one owned by another channel, is not counted).
rank	Position in this seed's list, 1 = strongest match.
channelId, channelTitle, channelHandle, channelUrl	The similar channel.
sourceVideosWithChannel, sourceVideoShare	How many of the videos read had this channel in their related panel, and that as a share (1 = next to all of them).
appearances, appearancesAsCollaborator	Total times the channel appeared across those panels, and how many of them were as a collaborator on a joint video.
bestPosition, averagePosition	Its highest and average place in the related panels (1 = top).
evidence	Up to 10 entries: the seed video, the related video that belongs to this channel, and its position.
subscriberCount, subscriberCountText, subscriberCountIsRounded	The subscriber count as YouTube displays it ("25.6M subscribers" is 25,600,000 rounded). YouTube does not publish exact counts.
videoCount, totalViews, joinedDate, country, isVerified, description	From the channel's public About page; null when YouTube does not show it.
channelDetailsStatus	ok, not-requested (details off), not-found, blocked or unreadable - the details are null unless it is ok.

Rows whose status is not ok are free and carry a note that says why: invalid-input, duplicate, no-such-channel, different-channel-returned, no-long-form-videos, no-similar-channels, no-filter-match, blocked, unreadable, not-checked and budget-reached.

Pricing

Pay per result: $0.02 per similar channel returned ($20 per 1,000), with lower prices on higher Apify plans. Free rows (reasons, duplicates, channels that could not be read) are never charged. The About page reads for channel details are included in the row price. The Actor stops before it would exceed the maximum total charge you set for a run, returns a free budget-reached row that says how many channels were left out, and never reads pages for rows it could not charge for.

Notes

• The related-videos panel is YouTube's recommendation for a visitor who is not signed in, in English and the United States (hl=en&gl=US). It changes over time, so two runs a week apart can rank differently.
• Subscriber counts are YouTube's rounded display values, not exact numbers.
• No YouTube Data API key and no sign-in are used. Only public pages that YouTube's robots.txt allows are requested: the Videos tab, watch pages and About pages.