YouTube Channel Upload Monitor

What this Actor does

YouTube Channel Upload Monitor collects the newest uploads from the channels you name and hands you each one as a typed record — the title, the full description, the publish date, the view count, the rating count and the thumbnail. You give it a list of handles; on a schedule it returns only what has appeared since it last ran.

It reads YouTube's own published upload feed at https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml. That is a first-party syndication surface: the same document a feed reader subscribes to. There is no API key, no quota to exhaust, and nothing behind a login.

Key features

Feature	Detail
Input	Handles like @NASA, channel URLs, UC… channel IDs or playlist IDs — mixed freely in one list
Fields per video	22 typed fields, including the full description, view count, rating count and average
Resolution	A handle or custom URL is resolved to its canonical channel ID before the feed is read
Playlists	A playlist ID reads that playlist's feed instead of a channel's uploads
Incremental	onlyNewSinceLastRun remembers the video IDs it delivered per channel, so a schedule returns only new uploads
Filters	minPublishedDate and minViewCount drop videos before you are charged for them
Unresolvable channels	Reported as unavailable with a reason, and never charged for
Output	Flat rows, one per video — no nested blobs, exports cleanly to CSV and Excel

How it works

1. Resolve every reference. A UC… ID and a playlist ID address a feed directly. A handle, a custom URL or a /user/ URL needs one page fetch, from which the canonical channel ID is read — not the first UC… string on the page, which belongs to a recommendation rail.
2. Read the published feed. One request per channel to YouTube's own videos.xml.
3. Apply your filters. Date floor, view floor and the since-last-run set are applied before anything is charged, so a video you filtered out is a video you did not pay for.
4. Charge, then deliver. Records are charged before they are pushed and delivery is truncated to the number actually charged, so the row count you receive and the row count you are billed for are the same number.

A run over ten channels typically finishes in a few seconds.

What the feed does and does not carry

YouTube publishes the 15 most recent uploads on a channel's feed, and nothing older. That is a property of the feed, not a limit this Actor chose, and it is why maxVideosPerChannel caps at 15. This is a monitor: point it at channels you want to keep watching and run it on a schedule. It is not a way to download a channel's back catalogue, and it does not claim to be.

The feed also carries no comment thread, no subscriber count and no video duration, so none of those are in the schema. A field this Actor does not serve is a field it does not advertise.

Input

The minimum input is one channel. Everything else has a working default.

{
  "channels": ["@NASA", "UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ", "https://www.youtube.com/@Google"],
  "maxVideosPerChannel": 15,
  "minPublishedDate": "2026-08-01",
  "minViewCount": 0,
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "includeChannelRecord": true
}

Field	Type	Default	Meaning
channels	array of string	—	Handles, channel URLs, UC… IDs or playlist IDs. Required.
maxVideosPerChannel	integer	15	Cap per channel. The feed itself holds 15, so this only lowers it.
minPublishedDate	string	—	ISO date. Older videos are neither returned nor charged.
minViewCount	integer	—	Skip videos below this. A video with no counter at all is kept.
onlyNewSinceLastRun	boolean	false	Remembers delivered video IDs per channel and skips them next run.
includeChannelRecord	boolean	true	Adds one summary row per channel alongside the videos.

Output

Every run writes one row per video to the default dataset. The record below is a real row from a real run against @YouTube, copied unchanged:

{
  "recordType": "video",
  "videoId": "fFScGqpkth8",
  "title": "don't talk to us til we've had our pumpkin spice latte",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fFScGqpkth8",
  "channelId": "UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ",
  "channelTitle": "YouTube",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ",
  "publishedAt": "2026-08-29T20:04:22+00:00",
  "updatedAt": "2026-08-30T01:22:25+00:00",
  "description": null,
  "descriptionLength": 0,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i3.ytimg.com/vi/fFScGqpkth8/hqdefault.jpg",
  "thumbnailWidth": 480,
  "thumbnailHeight": 360,
  "viewCount": 15763,
  "ratingCount": 400,
  "ratingAverage": 5,
  "hashtagsInDescription": [],
  "linksInDescription": [],
  "requestedAs": "UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ",
  "feedUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-30T04:41:27.101Z"
}

description is null there because that upload genuinely has no description, and null is what that means. A field the feed does not carry is never rendered as 0 or ""; absent and empty are different answers and they stay different.

The channel summary record

With includeChannelRecord left on, each channel also produces one row of type channel:

{
  "recordType": "channel",
  "channelId": "UCLA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ",
  "channelTitle": "NASA",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ",
  "channelPublishedAt": "2008-06-03T18:44:30+00:00",
  "requestedAs": "@NASA",
  "feedUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCLA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ",
  "videosInFeed": 15,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-30T04:41:27.101Z"
}

requestedAs carries the string you supplied, so a row can always be traced back to the entry in your input that produced it. The dataset exports to JSON, CSV, Excel and XML from the Storage tab, and the same rows are readable through the dataset API.

Pricing

This Actor is priced per event, so you pay for what it delivers rather than for how long it runs.

Event	Price	Charged when
video-returned	$0.006	Once per video record delivered to the dataset
channel-resolved	$0.002	Once per channel or playlist whose feed was successfully read

There is no per-run start fee and no monthly minimum. Watching 20 channels with nothing new to report costs $0.04 — the channel reads and nothing else. A first run over 20 channels that returns a full feed each costs $0.04 plus 300 videos at $0.006, so $1.84.

How that price was set. It is anchored on what comparable YouTube monitors on this Store charge per delivered row, which runs from $0.0032 to $0.015, and it sits deliberately in the upper half of that band because the record is wider: 22 typed fields including the full description text, the rating count and average, and the hashtags and links parsed out of the description. There is room to move the price down and none is needed to move it up.

Charges are applied before records are handed over, and delivery is truncated to whatever your own budget cap allowed, so you are never billed for a row you did not receive.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key or a Google account? No. The upload feed is public and needs no credential. This Actor holds none and asks you for none.

Why only 15 videos per channel? Because that is what YouTube publishes on the feed. Asking for more would mean claiming a back catalogue this surface does not carry.

Can it watch a playlist? Yes. Pass a playlist ID and it reads that playlist's feed instead of the channel's uploads.

Why did a channel come back as unavailable? Either the handle does not resolve to a channel, or YouTube did not serve its feed. Both are reported with the reason, and neither is charged for. A channel that genuinely has no uploads resolves fine and returns zero videos, which is a different answer.

Are the view counts live? They are exactly what the feed said at the moment it was read, and scrapedAt records that moment. The feed lags the watch page slightly; this Actor does not smooth over the difference.

Can I use it to detect new uploads without polling the whole feed? That is what onlyNewSinceLastRun does. It keeps the delivered video IDs per channel in a key-value store inside your own account and skips them next time, so a scheduled run returns only genuinely new uploads — and charges only for those.

Does it get transcripts, comments or subscriber counts? No. None of them are on this feed, so none of them are in the schema.

Limits and troubleshooting

• maxVideosPerChannel is a cap, not a target. A channel with fewer uploads on its feed returns fewer rows, and you are charged for the rows you got.
• Handles cost one extra request. A UC… channel ID goes straight to the feed; a handle needs a page lookup first. If you are watching the same channels repeatedly, store their IDs.
• Rate limiting. A 429 or 5xx is retried three times with a growing pause. A feed that stays unreachable is reported as unavailable, never treated as an empty channel.
• Shorts are uploads too. They appear on the feed and are returned like any other video, with a /shorts/ URL. There is no flag on the feed distinguishing them beyond that URL.

Integrations and API

The Actor is callable from anywhere the Apify API reaches.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/praise-most-high~youtube-channel-upload-monitor/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"channels":["@NASA"],"onlyNewSinceLastRun":true}'

• Scheduling — run it hourly or daily from the Apify scheduler with onlyNewSinceLastRun on and the dataset only ever grows by what was actually published.
• Webhooks — fire on ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED to push new uploads straight into your own store.
• Python and JavaScript SDKs — both call it the same way; see the Apify client documentation.
• MCP — reachable as a tool from any MCP-speaking agent through Apify's own MCP server, with LIMITED_PERMISSIONS so it can be paid for per call.

Legal and data handling

Unofficial. This Actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by YouTube LLC or Google LLC. "YouTube" is a trademark of its owner and is used here only to identify the service being read.

The Actor reads a public syndication feed that YouTube itself publishes for the purpose of being read by feed clients. It collects no personal data, no viewer information and nothing behind an authentication boundary, and it stores no credentials because it needs none.

Whether your own use of the output is permitted is a question about your jurisdiction and your purpose, and it is yours to answer — this Actor makes no representation about it. YouTube's own Terms of Service govern your relationship with YouTube.

Support and feedback

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Bug reports that include the run ID and the input that produced the problem are answered fastest. Feature requests are read, and they are the main source of what gets built next.