YouTube Comments Monitor — New Comment Alerts (Vigia)

Monitor new comments on a YouTube video and get only NEW ones since last check, with a comment-velocity spike signal. Charged only on new comments, never per run. Ideal for sentiment-tracking, community and brand-safety agents.

Free tier — 10 results free on every run

The first 10 results of every run are free, on every run you ever make — not a one-off trial. Run it on your own subjects and see the real output before you are billed for a single result.

One guard: the free allowance never covers more than half of a run, so a run returning 6 results gets 3 free. That keeps the offer sustainable.

What it does

Monitor a YouTube video for new comments and a sentiment-volume spike. You get only what changed since your last check — never a full re-dump to diff yourself.

Why Vigia — 5 advantages a raw scraper can't match

1. You pay the alert price only for real change. New-comment alerts are billed only for genuinely new comments since your last check. A quiet run bills just the small source-check fee (the cost of looking) — never the alert price on unchanged data. Raw scrapers bill every row of a full re-scan every run.
2. Never billed on a failed source. The source check is charged only when the source actually responded. If it's down, you don't pay for our outage.
3. Append-only delta + spike signal. The first monitored run stores a free baseline; later runs deliver only what's new, plus a velocity-spike alert when volume suddenly surges (trend / review-bomb / hiring-surge).
4. Hard cost cap you control. Set maxTotalChargeUsd and the run can never bill above it — predictable spend, no surprise invoice.
5. Agent-ready output. Clean, normalized rows and a RUN_SUMMARY.json with ready-to-use signals — chainable from any MCP / A2A agent in one step.

Example input

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
  ],
  "monitorEnabled": true,
  "maxTotalChargeUsd": 1.0
}

Set monitorEnabled: true so the first run stores a free baseline and later runs return only new results. Pin a monitorId to keep separate targets from sharing state.

Output

Each row is a normalized change record: record_id, query_id, title, url, author, published_at, score, text. A RUN_SUMMARY.json accompanies every run with the aggregated signal (counts, velocity spikes, trend).

How you're charged

• Comment alert — billed once per new comment since the last check (this is the only charge that scales with change).
• Source check ($0.08) — billed once per monitored target per run, only when the source responded. A failed source is free.
• A quiet run bills only the source check ($0.08), never the alert price. Vigia never scrapes the source itself; it chains a licensed scraper, caps every call, and passes you only the delta.

---

Part of the Vigia monitoring suite — change-only billing, outage-safe, agent-ready.

Related tools

• Want to catch the new video itself, not just its comments? → YouTube Channel Videos Scraper

How to use it in 3 steps

1. Click Try for free and fill in YouTube video URLs (videoUrls).
2. Optional: adjust the other fields; every one has a description and a sensible default.
3. Click Start and download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read them from the API.

Use cases

• Audience research
• Sentiment analysis
• Community management

Use it from code (API)

Every Apify Actor is an API. Start a run and read the results with one call.

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("om_kh/youtube-comments-scraper").call(run_input={"videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"]})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('om_kh/youtube-comments-scraper').call({
    "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
    ]
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

One HTTP call (cURL) — runs the Actor and returns the dataset in the same response:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/om_kh~youtube-comments-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"]}'

Integrations: n8n, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets

• n8n — the official Apify node, operation Run Actor and get dataset, Actor om_kh/youtube-comments-scraper.
• Make — Apify › Run an Actor, then Apify › Get Dataset Items.
• Zapier — Apify › Run Actor; map the dataset items into your next step.
• Google Sheets, webhooks, Slack — add an integration from the Integrations tab of this Actor.
• Schedules — run it every hour or day from Schedules in Apify Console.

Use it from an AI agent (MCP and x402)

Connect Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP client to Apify's MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com and add this Actor, om_kh/youtube-comments-scraper, as a tool — the agent passes the same JSON as the run input and gets the dataset back.

AI agents that pay with x402 can run it too, without an Apify account: the Actor charges only per result delivered, so an agent pays exactly for what it gets.

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape YouTube Comments? This Actor collects only publicly available YouTube Comments data and never logs in. You are responsible for how you use it; check YouTube Comments's terms and your local law (GDPR, CCPA) if you store personal data, and ask a lawyer if unsure.

Do I need an account, cookies or an API key? No. You only need an Apify account to run it.

What data do I get? Comments with text, likes, replies count, author and date. Download it as JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML or XML, or read it from the API.

Am I charged when something fails? No. An input that fails is listed with its reason in the run summary and is never charged.

Can I run it on a schedule? Yes. Create a schedule in Apify Console (hourly, daily, weekly) and connect webhooks, Google Sheets, Slack, n8n, Make or Zapier.

Can I use it from Python, JavaScript or an AI agent? Yes: see the code samples above, or connect AI agents through MCP with the youtube_video_new_comments tool.

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