YouTube Channel Contact Email Finder

Extract publicly listed contact emails from YouTube channels — including the ones creators only put in their linked Instagram, TikTok, or Linktree bios.

What this actor does

• Creator emails: found in the channel's About description and links, and on linked profiles
• External sources: Instagram, TikTok, and Linktree links from the channel
• Bulk channels: multiple channels per run
• Optional network fallback: automatic route switching when a page looks blocked
• Empty fields are omitted — records only contain values that are actually populated.

Output

One record per channel. Fields with no value are omitted.

{
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@Apify/about",
  "channelId": "UCx...",
  "channelHandle": "@Apify",
  "channelName": "Apify",
  "channelDescription": "We help businesses extract data from the web...",
  "subscriberCount": 12500,
  "emails": ["hello@apify.com", "press@apify.com"],
  "sources": [
    {"email": "hello@apify.com", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@Apify/about", "sourceType": "channel_description"},
    {"email": "press@apify.com", "sourceUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/apify/", "sourceType": "instagram_bio"}
  ],
  "externalLinks": [
    "https://apify.com",
    "https://www.instagram.com/apify/",
    "https://twitter.com/apify"
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-24T12:00:00+00:00"
}

Field descriptions

• channelUrl — canonical URL of the scraped About page
• channelId — YouTube's stable channel identifier (UC...)
• channelHandle — the @handle form of the channel
• channelName — human-readable channel title
• channelDescription — full About description text
• subscriberCount — subscriber count expanded from YouTube's displayed label (so 1.2M becomes 1200000; approximate for large channels)
• emails — deduplicated, lower-cased, alphabetically sorted list of every email discovered for the channel
• sources — one entry per email with the exact URL and source type
• externalLinks — advertised links from the About page (not all are crawled)
• scrapedAt — ISO-8601 timestamp of when the channel was processed

Source types

sourceType	Where the email came from
channel_description	The channel's About description.
channel_external_link	An email embedded directly in an advertised link.
instagram_bio	Creator's Instagram profile (bio text or metadata).
tiktok_bio	Creator's TikTok profile.
linktree	A Linktree hub linked from the channel.

Error record — emitted instead of a channel record when something goes wrong, so the run never fails entirely:

{
  "type": "youtube_email_scraper_error",
  "reason": "fetch_failed",
  "message": "Could not fetch About page (blocked / offline / not found).",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@SomeClosedChannel/about",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-24T12:00:00+00:00"
}

reason is one of: invalid_url (the entry isn't a recognizable YouTube channel link), fetch_failed (the About page couldn't be fetched), parse_failed (the page loaded but its data couldn't be located), scrape_error (an unexpected error while scraping that channel), or invalid_input (no channelUrls were provided at all — this one has no channelUrl field since there's no URL to report).

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
channelUrls	array of strings	—	Required. YouTube channel URLs in any supported shape.
followExternalProfiles	boolean	true	Follow Instagram / TikTok / Linktree links discovered on the channel.
maxExternalPerChannel	integer	5	Cap on external profiles fetched per channel. The scraper enforces an internal cap of 20 regardless of a higher value.
autoProxyFallback	boolean	true	Automatically retry through Apify residential proxy when a page looks blocked.

Example: multiple channels with external profiles

{
  "channelUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@Apify",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast",
    "@MKBHD"
  ],
  "followExternalProfiles": true,
  "maxExternalPerChannel": 5,
  "autoProxyFallback": true
}

Example: single channel, About page only

{
  "channelUrls": ["@MrBeast"],
  "followExternalProfiles": false
}

Use cases

• Influencer outreach — build a ranked contact list for a shortlist of creators in a niche
• Brand partnership research — harvest business emails from your competitor's sponsored-creator roster
• Agency sourcing — quickly see which creators publish a reachable inbox vs. hide behind management
• PR and press — find the right email for an interview, quote, or product-review request
• CRM enrichment — keep your creator-contacts database synced with the emails currently advertised publicly

FAQ

Does this scraper bypass CAPTCHAs? No. The actor uses only the public About page and the public profile pages of Instagram, TikTok, and Linktree. When a page is fully blocked, the scraper emits an error record for that channel and moves on.

Do I need cookies, a login, or a YouTube API key? No. The scraper is unauthenticated and reads only publicly available data.

Will it find every email on a channel? It finds every email advertised in plain text, as a mailto: link, with common obfuscation ([at] / [dot]), and on linked Instagram / TikTok / Linktree bios. It cannot extract emails hidden behind YouTube's "View email address" click-to-reveal button — that gate requires a logged-in account and is not supported.

Does it follow every external link on a channel? No — only Instagram, TikTok, and Linktree, because those are where creators most often advertise a contact address. All external links are still listed in externalLinks so you can follow them downstream if you wish.

What if a channel has no public emails? The channel record is still emitted, just without the emails and sources fields. You can filter on the presence of emails in post-processing.

How does the proxy fallback work? If a page looks blocked, the scraper retries it once more through an Apify residential proxy (US). Set autoProxyFallback: false to never use the proxy; blocked pages then simply yield no emails (or a fetch_failed record for the About page).

How many linked profiles are opened per channel? Up to maxExternalPerChannel successfully loaded Instagram, TikTok or Linktree pages, never more than 20 even if you set a higher number. Other links (websites, X, Facebook) are listed in externalLinks but not opened.

Is this affiliated with YouTube? No. This is an independent, third-party actor that reads publicly available channel pages; it isn't affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube or Google.

Known limitations

• Click-to-reveal emails on YouTube are not supported. YouTube's "View email address" button requires a logged-in session; this actor is login-free by design.
• Instagram login walls occasionally show for certain regions or IP ranges. When this happens the scraper skips that bio and keeps the emails it already found elsewhere.
• TikTok region restrictions can replace a profile with an interstitial page; the scraper still extracts whatever metadata the interstitial exposes.
• Channels without a public About page (some custom-branding and music-artist channels) return a parse_failed error record.
• Subscriber counts reflect YouTube's publicly displayed rounded value (e.g. 12K → 12000). Exact counts below YouTube's display threshold are not available.