# YouTube Video & Channel Scraper — No API Key, No Login (`nick.cheng/youtube-video-channel-scraper`) Actor

Scrape YouTube video data and channel listings by URL, ID, or @handle. No API key, no login, no cookies, no proxies. Charged only for results actually returned.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/nick.cheng/youtube-video-channel-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Nicholas Cheng](https://apify.com/nick.cheng) (community)
- **Categories:** Videos, AI
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $15.00 / 1,000 video scrapeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## YouTube Video & Channel Scraper

**Give it a video link or a channel handle, get structured JSON back.** No API key, no OAuth, no login, no cookies, no quota to apply for. Point it at `dQw4w9WgXcQ`, `https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…`, `@veritasium`, or a `UC…` channel ID.

**You are charged only for results that actually came back.** A private, deleted, or region-blocked video produces an explanatory row and costs nothing.

| | |
|---|---|
| **Input** | Video URLs / IDs (watch, Shorts, youtu.be, embed) and channel URLs / @handles / UC… IDs |
| **Output** | Video metadata + channel profiles, as separate rows |
| **Price** | $0.015 per video · $0.005 per channel — **the same on every Apify plan** |
| **API key** | Not needed. This does not use the YouTube Data API, so it does not consume your quota |
| **Transcripts** | **Not supported.** See [What this Actor cannot do](#what-this-actor-cannot-do) |

***

### What you get

#### Videos

```json
{
  "itemType": "video",
  "videoId": "aircAruvnKk",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk",
  "title": "But what is a neural network? | Deep learning chapter 1",
  "description": "Full text of the video description, not truncated.",
  "durationSeconds": 1120,
  "viewCount": 23951183,
  "likesLabel": "like this video along with 512,000 other people",
  "publishedAt": "2017-10-05T00:00:00-07:00",
  "channelId": "UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw",
  "channelName": "3Blue1Brown",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw",
  "channelSubscribersLabel": "7.4M subscribers",
  "keywords": ["neural networks", "deep learning", "machine learning"],
  "category": "Education",
  "isLive": false,
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aircAruvnKk/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "availableCaptions": [
    { "language": "en", "name": "English", "isAutoGenerated": false },
    { "language": "es", "name": "Spanish", "isAutoGenerated": false }
  ]
}
```

`viewCount` and `durationSeconds` are real numbers, not display strings — you can sort and filter on
them without parsing `"1.2M"` first. `likesLabel` is a string on purpose: YouTube no longer exposes
an exact like count to logged-out clients, and inventing a number from a rounded label would be
making data up.

`availableCaptions` lists which caption tracks a video has, in which languages, and whether they are
human-written or auto-generated. It does **not** include the caption text — see below.

#### Channels

Each channel you pass returns one profile row, plus the videos you asked for:

```json
{
  "itemType": "channel",
  "channelId": "UCLA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ",
  "channelName": "NASA",
  "handle": "@NASA",
  "subscribersLabel": "15.1M subscribers",
  "videoCountLabel": "6.1K videos",
  "description": "NASA's mission is to explore the unknown in air and space…",
  "videosOnPage": 30
}
```

***

### Input

```json
{
  "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk", "dQw4w9WgXcQ"],
  "channelUrls": ["@veritasium", "https://www.youtube.com/@NASA"],
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 10,
  "includeChannelProfile": true,
  "maxItems": 0
}
```

**`maxVideosPerChannel` applies per channel, in one run.** Monitoring forty channels and taking the
five newest videos from each is a single run, not forty.

***

### Pricing

Pay-per-event. You pay for what came back, nothing else.

| Event | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| `video-scraped` | **$0.015** | One video with full metadata. |
| `channel-resolved` | **$0.005** | One channel profile plus its recent video list. Charged once per channel. |

Two events because the work is shaped that way: resolving a channel is cheap, loading a video page
is not. Splitting them means a channel-listing job is not priced as if it were a video job.

#### What you are not charged for

Every item below is checkable against a run log:

| | What happens here |
|---|---|
| **Unavailable videos** | Private, deleted, region-blocked, or mistyped IDs produce one row marked `chargedForThis: false`. Nothing is billed. |
| **Empty or placeholder rows** | If the video data did not come back, no row is written. There are no filler rows in your dataset. |
| **The free plan** | Same code path, same fields, same limits. No demo mode, no 10-row cap, no nulls in place of data. |
| **Plan-tiered pricing** | $0.015 per video on **every** Apify plan — Free, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond. Check the Pricing tab: all six columns are identical. |

That last row is worth checking on any Actor you compare, including this one. The Pricing tab shows
the per-plan breakdown, and the price a listing advertises in its title is not always the price a
free-plan run pays.

***

### What this Actor cannot do

Being straight about this up front so you do not buy the wrong tool:

- **No transcripts or caption text.** YouTube serves caption tracks only to clients that pass its
  proof-of-origin attestation, and returns an empty body to everyone else. That is true regardless
  of IP, proxy type, or HTTP client — we measured it across datacenter, residential, and unproxied
  connections, and every one returned `200 OK` with zero bytes. Producing transcripts would mean
  defeating that attestation, which this Actor does not do. `availableCaptions` tells you which
  tracks exist so you can decide what to do next; the text itself is not something we can deliver
  honestly, so we do not sell it.
- **No comments.** Same reason.
- **No search.** This works from links and handles, not keywords.
- **No exact like counts.** YouTube stopped exposing them to logged-out clients. You get the
  rounded accessibility label instead, verbatim.
- **No private, members-only, or age-gated videos.** Those require an account, and this Actor never
  signs in to anything.

***

### How it stays working

Video pages are fetched through rotating residential connections because YouTube shows a bot check
to datacenter addresses — we measured 1 usable response in 10 without one, and 9 in 10 with. Channel
pages need no such thing and are fetched directly, so a channel-listing job does not pay for
bandwidth it does not need.

The Actor also stops downloading each video page as soon as it has the two embedded JSON blocks it
needs, rather than pulling the full 1.3 MB. That is roughly half the bytes, and it is why the
per-video price can stay where it is.

***

### Integrating

Every run writes to a standard Apify dataset, so the usual routes all work: the REST API,
the JavaScript and Python clients, scheduled runs, webhooks, and the MCP server for agent use.
Two dataset views are provided — **Videos & channels** for everything, **Channels only** for the
profile rows on their own.

# Actor input Schema

## `videoUrls` (type: `array`):

YouTube videos to scrape. Accepts watch links, Shorts links, youtu.be links, embed links, or bare 11-character video IDs.

## `channelUrls` (type: `array`):

Channels whose recent videos should be scraped. Accepts @handles, /channel/UC… URLs, or plain UC… IDs. Each channel contributes up to 'Max videos per channel' videos.

## `maxVideosPerChannel` (type: `integer`):

How many recent videos to take from each channel. Applies per channel, so one run can cover many channels without one of them eating the whole budget.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Hard ceiling on rows for the whole run, across every video and channel. Leave at 0 for no limit.

## `includeChannelProfile` (type: `boolean`):

For each channel, also return one row with the channel's own profile: name, handle, description, subscriber and video counts, keywords, and avatar. Turn off if you only want the videos.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"
  ],
  "channelUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@NASA"
  ],
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 10,
  "maxItems": 0,
  "includeChannelProfile": true
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `videos` (type: `string`):

No description

## `channels` (type: `string`):

No description

## `summary` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"
    ],
    "channelUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/@NASA"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("nick.cheng/youtube-video-channel-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"],
    "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@NASA"],
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("nick.cheng/youtube-video-channel-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"
  ],
  "channelUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@NASA"
  ]
}' |
apify call nick.cheng/youtube-video-channel-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,nick.cheng/youtube-video-channel-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/6mXjuQdQNPsxSKpbq/builds/z5bs1BwBLMZwbrW5p/openapi.json