YouTube Comments Scraper — YouTube Comments API Alternative

YouTube comments export: paste video URLs and download every comment and reply as CSV or JSON.

A YouTube comments scraper that works as a YouTube comments API alternative (no API key, no quota): give it video URLs, get every comment — YouTube comment replies included — as one record per comment.

Extract comments from any YouTube video as clean JSON — for social monitoring, PR/comms and media-monitoring teams, and AI agents. Give it one or more video URLs and get one record per comment (replies included).

📊 Sample Output

video_id	video_url	comment_id	author	channel	time_parsed
dQw4w9WgXcQ	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ	Ugzge340dBgB75hWBm54AaABAg	@YouTube	UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ	1758771593.979251
dQw4w9WgXcQ	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ	UgzKYksqeQ5gA3t0g0F4AaABAg	@grustache4569	UCKrzgYonJnMd0Dk7zQXjYXw	1601005194.047452
dQw4w9WgXcQ	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ	UgwPwTibxdgqCHZxktd4AaABAg	@bdr8823	UCdi6tGxvFvTRGe-7dAn7m7w	1569382794.070316
dQw4w9WgXcQ	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ	Ugxzbv_ZeZXNRcfwsSF4AaABAg	@candycake9531	UCNLgzvqrGzFi5SEAbVkFchg	1601005194.094615
dQw4w9WgXcQ	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ	UgzgKQV9A6k2lj_y8Ex4AaABAg	@ItzCharlie_Bloxd	UCuz0twX2F1Z1QXX6B8ShwlQ	1789875594.115011
dQw4w9WgXcQ	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ	UgyEnXfdC-umwvTt8JF4AaABAg	@Oatman69	UCWf34D_s8K_m2vwBISIDWtg	1601005194.135924

Real rows from run btHgdFIOrC6Qi7hoS on build 0.0.23 (2026-09-25), unedited apart from masked emails/phones and shortened long text; fields the source does not publish are empty.

⚙️ Sample inputs

This is the Store example input — the same input Apify's automated check runs — so it is proven to return rows on the current build. Paste it into the input form, or send it through the API, CLI or a schedule:

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
  ],
  "maxComments": 100,
  "includeReplies": true,
  "sortBy": "top"
}

🔧 Input reference

Field	Type	Default	What it does
videoUrls	array	["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"]	YouTube video URLs (or IDs) to scrape comments from.
maxComments	integer	100	Maximum comments to return per video. Defaults to 25 as an evaluation-sized sample; raise it for full runs (each comment is billed).
includeReplies	boolean	true	Include reply comments (threaded).
sortBy	string (top, recent)	"top"	Comment sort order.

🧾 JSON sample record

One real record from run btHgdFIOrC6Qi7hoS (emails/phones masked, long text shortened):

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "video_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "comment_id": "Ugzge340dBgB75hWBm54AaABAg",
  "text": "can confirm: he never gave us up",
  "author": "@YouTube",
  "channel": "UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ",
  "votes": "319K",
  "heart": true,
  "is_reply": false,
  "time_parsed": 1758771593.979251,
  "time_text": "1 year ago"
}

💰 Pricing

Event	Price (USD)	When it is charged
Actor Start (apify-actor-start)	$0.005	Charged when the Actor starts running. Number of events charged depends on Actor memory (one event per GB, minimum one event).
Comment (apify-default-dataset-item)	$0.003	Charge per YouTube comment extracted

Pay-per-event: you pay only for what the run delivers. A run that delivers nothing bills no result events (only the actor-start event, when the actor defines one). Example: a run that delivers 100 results costs 100 × $0.003 = $0.30 plus the start fee.

🔗 Related Actors

More from the NexGenData Social, video & reviews family:

• StackOverflow Scraper — Q&A & Dev Trends
• Universal Video Extractor — Any URL to Downloadable Video
• WCAG 2.2 Accessibility Auditor — Bulk axe-core
• YouTube Transcript Scraper — Captions & Text
• YouTube Scraper — Video Metadata, Stats & Download Links

7 more in this family on the NexGenData Store page.

📊 What you get

One JSON record per comment:

• comment_id — comment id
• text — comment text
• author — author display name
• channel — author channel id
• votes — like count as shown by YouTube
• heart — hearted by the creator (boolean)
• is_reply — reply vs. top-level comment (boolean)
• time_text / time_parsed — relative time + parsed timestamp
• video_id, video_url — source video

⚙️ Input

• videoUrls — YouTube video URLs (or 11-character video IDs)
• maxComments — maximum comments per video
• includeReplies — include threaded replies (default: true)
• sortBy — top or recent

💵 Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.003 per comment plus a small per-run start fee. You pay only for the comments actually returned.

🔎 Free preview limit

Free-plan runs return a 200-comment preview per run so you can evaluate the output. Paid-plan runs are uncapped and extract in full (billed per comment). To extract beyond the preview, upgrade to any paid Apify plan.

⏰ Run it on a schedule

Point it at the videos you care about and schedule a recurring run to keep pulling fresh comments as they arrive.

🤖 Use with AI agents

Clean, structured JSON plugs directly into agents and pipelines via the Apify API and MCP.