🎬 YouTube Scraper

🚀 Collect YouTube videos, channels, and playlist data in minutes. Search by keyword, paste playlist URLs, or channel handles. Export video stats, metadata, thumbnails, and channel profiles. No coding, no YouTube API key.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-04-23 · 📊 25+ fields per video · 🔍 Search + playlist modes · 📅 Date + duration filters · 🚫 No auth required

The YouTube Scraper collects video and channel data from YouTube, returning 25+ fields per video: title, view count, like count, comment count, duration, upload date, channel name, subscriber count, description, thumbnails, and video URL. Supports search queries, playlist URLs, video URLs, and channel handles. Runs support up to 1,000,000 items on a paid plan.

The Actor supports keyword search with filters (sort order, upload date, duration, video type, features) and direct playlist URL scraping. No YouTube Data API key needed.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Content creators, marketers, market researchers, media agencies, data analysts, academic researchers	Trend research, competitor analysis, content strategy, playlist monitoring, channel benchmarking, audience research

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📋 What the YouTube Scraper does

Two input modes with search filters:

• 🔍 Search mode. Keywords, video URLs, or channel handles as search queries.
• 📋 Playlist mode. Paste playlist URLs to extract all videos in order.
• 📊 Sort options. Relevance, upload date, view count, rating.
• 📅 Upload date filter. Last hour, today, this week, this month, this year.
• ⏱️ Duration filter. Short (<4 min), medium (4-20 min), long (>20 min).
• 🎬 Video type filter. Video, channel, playlist, movie.
• 🏷️ Feature filters. Live, 4K, subtitles, Creative Commons, 360, VR180, HDR, location.

Each video record includes title, URL, channel name, channel URL, subscriber count, view count, like count, comment count, duration, upload date, description, thumbnails, and tags.

💡 Why it matters: manually researching YouTube trends, competitor channels, or content strategies means clicking through search results and playlists page by page. This Actor exports structured video data at scale, ready for your dashboards, content calendars, or trend reports.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
searchQueries	array	[]	Keywords, video URLs, or channel handles.
playlistUrls	array	[]	YouTube playlist URLs.
maxItems	integer	10	Max items per source. Free: limited. Paid: up to 1,000,000.
sortBy	string	""	Sort: relevance, date, view count, rating.
uploadDate	string	""	Filter: last hour, today, this week, this month, this year.
videoDuration	string	""	Filter: short, medium, long.
videoType	string	""	Filter: video, channel, playlist, movie.
features	array	[]	Filters: live, 4K, subtitles, Creative Commons, 360, HDR.

Example: trending AI videos this week.

{
    "searchQueries": ["artificial intelligence"],
    "sortBy": "viewCount",
    "uploadDate": "thisWeek",
    "maxItems": 50
}

Example: all videos from a playlist.

{
    "playlistUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeiKm4sgNOknGvNjby9efdf"],
    "maxItems": 200
}

⚠️ Good to Know: YouTube search results are personalized by region and account. This Actor uses a neutral, logged-out view for consistent results across runs.

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📊 Output

Each video record contains 25+ fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🖼️ thumbnailUrl	string	"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/..."
📝 title	string	"How AI is Changing Everything"
🔗 videoUrl	string	"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=..."
👤 channelName	string	"TechChannel"
🔗 channelUrl	string	"https://www.youtube.com/@TechChannel"
👥 subscriberCount	number	2500000
👀 viewCount	number	1200000
👍 likeCount	number	45000
💬 commentCount	number	3200
⏱️ duration	string	"15:42"
📅 uploadDate	string	"2026-04-10"
📝 description	string	"In this video we explore..."
🏷️ tags	array	["AI", "technology", "future"]
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-04-16T00:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🔍	Search + playlist modes. Keywords, video URLs, channel handles, and playlist URLs.
📊	25+ fields per video. Views, likes, comments, duration, channel stats, and tags.
📅	Search filters. Upload date, duration, video type, and feature flags.
👤	Channel data. Name, URL, subscriber count per video.
📋	Playlist support. Extract all videos from any public playlist in order.
⚡	Scalable. From quick 10-video samples to full channel archives.
🚫	No authentication. No YouTube Data API key needed.

📊 YouTube has over 2 billion logged-in users monthly and 500+ hours of video uploaded every minute. Structured access to video and channel data powers every content strategy, trend analysis, and competitive research workflow.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ YouTube Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	Any public video/playlist	Live per run	sort, date, duration, type, features	⚡ 2 min
YouTube Data API	Free with quota (10K/day)	Full	Real-time	Many	⏳ Hours (API key setup)
Paid video analytics tools	$50-500/month	Multi-platform	Varies	Many	🐢 Days
Manual YouTube browsing	Free	Manual	Manual	UI only	🕒 Hours per search

Pick this Actor when you want YouTube data on demand, without managing API quotas or keys.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the YouTube Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Enter search keywords or paste playlist URLs. Set filters and maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

📊 Content Strategy & Marketing Research trending topics by keyword and view count Benchmark channel performance against competitors Track upload frequency and engagement patterns Build content calendars from competitor analysis	📈 Market Research & Analytics Analyze video performance by topic and category Track subscriber growth across channels Study engagement ratios (likes/views, comments/views) Build longitudinal trend datasets
🎓 Academic & Media Research Build video datasets for research projects Study content creation patterns at scale Analyze thumbnail and title strategies Track educational content trends	📋 Playlist & Channel Monitoring Extract full playlist contents for archival Track playlist changes over time Monitor channel upload schedules Build notification systems for new content

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Empirical datasets for papers, thesis work, and coursework Longitudinal studies tracking changes across snapshots Reproducible research with cited, versioned data pulls Classroom exercises on data analysis and ethical scraping	🎨 Personal and creative Side projects, portfolio demos, and indie app launches Data visualizations, dashboards, and infographics Content research for bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters Hobbyist collections and personal trackers
🤝 Non-profit and civic Transparency reporting and accountability projects Advocacy campaigns backed by public-interest data Community-run databases for local issues Investigative journalism on public records	🧪 Experimentation Prototype AI and machine-learning pipelines with real data Validate product-market hypotheses before engineering spend Train small domain-specific models on niche corpora Test dashboard concepts with live input

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

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🔌 Automating YouTube Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Daily pulls keep your content monitoring dashboard in sync.

🔌 Integrate with any app

YouTube Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get alerts on new uploads
• Airbyte - Pipe video data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

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🔗 Recommended Actors

• 💬 YouTube Comments Scraper - Comments and replies from YouTube videos
• 📸 Instagram Posts Scraper - Posts and engagement from public profiles
• 🐦 X.com Tweets Scraper - Tweet data and engagement metrics
• 📱 Reddit Posts Scraper - Reddit posts with engagement data
• 🎬 Auto Video Thumbnail Generator - Generate video thumbnails

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more video and social media scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by YouTube, Google LLC, or Alphabet Inc. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available video metadata is collected.