YouTube Scraper

Scrape videos, Shorts, channels, playlists, search results and comments from YouTube:

• Videos and Shorts: any video by its URL or ID: watch, youtu.be, Shorts, embed and live links.
• Channels: by URL, @handle or channel ID. You get the channel's details and its videos, Shorts and live streams, newest, most popular or oldest first.
• Search: the videos or Shorts YouTube shows for a keyword, with its filters: upload date, duration, and features such as 4K, subtitles, Creative Commons or live.
• Playlists: every video of a playlist, in its order.
• Comments: as many as you need per video, top or newest first, with their replies if you want them.

Every video comes with its exact views and likes, publish date, duration, description, hashtags, tags, category, comment count, live status, thumbnail, and its channel's name, handle, badge and subscribers. Every channel comes with its subscribers, exact video and view counts, description, links, country and join date. Every comment comes with its text, author, likes, reply count, date, and whether it's pinned, hearted by the creator, or edited.

It needs no browser, no login and no API key. A video, 5 of a channel's, 5 from a search, the channel and 55 comments took 13 seconds; a channel's 200 videos and 50 Shorts, a 50-video search and a 100-video playlist, all with details, took 45 seconds to 2 minutes; 1,000 comments of one video with their replies 15 seconds to 1.5 minutes, depending on how hard YouTube throttles the IP. It costs $1 per 1,000 videos and $0.30 per 1,000 comments.

What people use it for

• Competitor and influencer research: every upload of a channel with its views, likes and dates.
• Content research: what ranks for a keyword, which lengths and topics get the views.
• Comment analysis: audience sentiment, questions and feature requests, with the replies.
• Monitoring: new videos of a list of channels since a date, day by day.
• Datasets for AI: titles, descriptions, tags and comments at scale.

How to scrape YouTube

1. Click Try for free; Apify's free plan covers a first run.
2. Enter Videos and Shorts, Channels, Playlists or Search terms, and how many videos you want.
3. Click Start, then download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read them through the API.

An input with more options:

{
  "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R6yNUnRXZ64"],
  "channels": ["@mkbhd", "https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium"],
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 100,
  "maxShortsPerChannel": 20,
  "channelSort": "newest",
  "searchTerms": ["sourdough bread"],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 50,
  "uploadDate": "month",
  "playlists": ["https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFgquLnL59alCl_2TQvOiD5Vgm1hCaGSI"],
  "publishedAfter": "2026-09-01",
  "maxCommentsPerVideo": 100,
  "maxRepliesPerComment": 5
}

maxCommentsPerVideo counts replies too. Turn off includeVideoDetails for a faster run with what channel tabs, playlists and search show: the title, rounded views, an approximate date and the duration. Turn off includeChannelDetails to get a channel's videos only.

Output

A video:

{
  "type": "video",
  "id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "channelName": "Rick Astley",
  "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "channelHandle": "@RickAstleyYT",
  "channelIsVerified": true,
  "subscribers": 4550000,
  "publishedAt": "2009-10-24T23:57:33-07:00",
  "durationSeconds": 213,
  "views": 1820558994,
  "likes": 19423981,
  "commentsCount": 2400000,
  "commentsOff": false,
  "description": "The official video for “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. ...",
  "hashtags": ["RickAstleyNever", "RickAstley", "NeverGonnaGiveYouUp", "WheneverYouNeedSomebody", "OfficialMusicVideo"],
  "keywords": ["rick astley", "Never Gonna Give You Up", "nggyu", "never gonna give you up lyrics", "rick rolled"],
  "category": "Music",
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "isFamilySafe": true,
  "isUnlisted": false,
  "liveStatus": null,
  "liveStartedAt": null,
  "input": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "position": null
}

A channel:

{
  "type": "channel",
  "id": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
  "handle": "@mkbhd",
  "title": "Marques Brownlee",
  "description": "MKBHD: Quality Tech Videos | YouTuber | Geek | Consumer Electronics | Tech Head | Internet Personality!\n\nbusiness@MKBHD.com\n\nNYC",
  "subscribers": 21300000,
  "videos": 1853,
  "views": 5703905192,
  "joinedAt": "2008-03-21",
  "country": "United States",
  "isVerified": true,
  "links": [{"title": "Twitter", "url": "http://twitter.com/MKBHD"}, {"title": "Instagram", "url": "http://instagram.com/MKBHD"}],
  "keywords": "MKBHD MarquesBrownlee Marques Brownlee",
  "avatar": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/qu4TmIaYUlS41-dJ9gZ7DUR3nilvmB5_11i6OKSdvNnBNiyOusZP1bMN6ICnuxtjFBb6ioKgRQ=s900-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
  "isFamilySafe": true,
  "input": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd"
}

A comment:

{
  "type": "comment",
  "id": "Ugzge340dBgB75hWBm54AaABAg",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoTitle": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "text": "can confirm: he never gave us up",
  "author": "@YouTube",
  "authorChannelId": "UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ",
  "authorIsVerified": true,
  "authorIsChannelOwner": false,
  "likes": 320000,
  "replyCount": 963,
  "publishedAt": "2025-09-27",
  "publishedTimeText": "1 year ago",
  "isEdited": false,
  "isPinned": true,
  "isHearted": true,
  "isReply": false,
  "parentId": null
}

Shorts have "type": "short" and the same fields. A reply has "isReply": true and its comment's ID as parentId.

Use it as an API

One call runs it and returns the results as JSON (for runs under 5 minutes; longer ones start a run and read its dataset). Apify's Python and JavaScript clients, and its Make, Zapier and n8n integrations, work the same way.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/pikoulas~youtube/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"], "channels": ["@mkbhd"], "maxVideosPerChannel": 5, "searchTerms": ["sourdough bread"], "maxResultsPerSearch": 5, "maxCommentsPerVideo": 5}'

AI agents can call it as a tool through Apify's MCP server: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=pikoulas/youtube.

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube?

You pay $0.001 per video or Short, which is $1 per 1,000, $0.001 per channel, and $0.0003 per comment or reply, which is $0.30 per 1,000. Runs that go through Apify's residential proxy also pay its traffic, $0.0012 per 100 KB: a video with details is about 20 KB, 1,000 comments about 1.3 MB. There are no monthly fees.

Good to know

• YouTube shows comment and channel dates only as "3 weeks ago" and rounds them down, so publishedAt of a comment is the latest date it can be. Likes of comments, subscribers and comment counts are rounded by YouTube too (320K, 21.3M).
• Without video details, dates of channel and playlist videos are approximate the same way, and Shorts from a channel's tab have no date at all. publishedAfter still works exactly: the run fetches the date of every video that could be on either side of it.
• YouTube's search sorts by relevance or popularity only; it dropped sorting by upload date and by rating. Use uploadDate for recent results.
• Tags, category and the exact publish time come from YouTube's player. When YouTube asks the run's IP to sign in there and no other IP is available, videos still come with their title, exact views and likes, date, description and channel, but without those.
• Private, deleted and members-only videos can't be scraped; the log names them.

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape YouTube?

It collects only what YouTube shows publicly, without logging in. Scraping public data is generally legal, but personal data is protected by laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA, and YouTube's terms may limit how you use what you collect. If you're unsure, ask a lawyer; Apify's Is web scraping legal? is a good start.

Something missing or not working?

Open an issue on the Issues tab with the input you used, or ask there for a field you need.