# Fast YouTube Scraper — Videos, Shorts & Channels (`rbbscrap/fast-youtube-scraper`) Actor

Ultra-fast YouTube scraper powered by Google's internal InnerTube API. Extract search results, video metadata, shorts, view counts and channel details in milliseconds without official API quotas or browser overhead.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/rbbscrap/fast-youtube-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Hector](https://apify.com/rbbscrap) (community)
- **Categories:** Videos, Social media, Lead generation
- **Stats:** 4 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 5 bookmarks
- **User rating**: 5.00 out of 5 stars

## Pricing

Pay per usage

This Actor is paid per platform usage. The Actor is free to use, and you only pay for the Apify platform usage, which gets cheaper the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-usage

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## ⚡ Fast YouTube Scraper — Search, Videos, Shorts & Channels

Extract YouTube video search results, YouTube Shorts, full video metadata, and channel uploads **in milliseconds without official API quotas or browser overhead**.

Powered directly by Google's internal **InnerTube API**, this Actor bypasses heavy headless browsers (Puppeteer/Playwright) to deliver **10x faster execution** at a fraction of the cloud computing cost.

***

### 🎯 Key Features

- **🚀 Ultra-Fast & Lightweight:** Pure HTTP execution consuming only **256 MB RAM**. Completes in seconds instead of minutes.
- **🔑 Zero API Keys Required:** No Google Cloud console setup, no daily quota limits, no OAuth authentication.
- **🔍 3 Powerful Scraping Modes:**
  1. **Search Mode:** Search YouTube videos and shorts by keywords with pagination and sorting filters (*Upload Date*, *View Count*, *Rating*, *Relevance*).
  2. **Direct Video Details:** Extract deep metadata (author, category, view count, length, keywords, status) for specific video URLs or IDs.
  3. **Channel Scraper:** Scrape video uploads and subscriber metrics directly from channel handles (`@ChannelName`) or URLs.
- **📱 Shorts & Regular Videos:** Automatically detects and tags YouTube Shorts vs full-length videos.
- **💰 Ultra-Low Execution Cost:** Run thousands of searches for cents on Apify.

***

### 🆚 Why Choose This Over Other YouTube Scrapers?

| Feature | Standard Apify Scrapers | Official YouTube Data API | **Fast YouTube Scraper (This Actor)** |
| :--- | :---: | :---: | :---: |
| **Engine** | Puppeteer / Playwright | REST API v3 | **InnerTube Protocol (Pure HTTP)** |
| **Memory (RAM)** | 2,048 – 4,096 MB | N/A | **256 MB** ⚡ |
| **Speed per Page** | 10 – 30 seconds | 1 – 2 seconds | **< 0.5 seconds** 🚀 |
| **Daily Quotas** | None | 10,000 units/day limit | **Unlimited** |
| **API Key Required** | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (Google Cloud) | **❌ No Key Needed** |
| **Cost per 1,000 runs** | ~$5.00+ | Quota billing | **~$0.10** 💎 |

***

### 📥 Input Options

#### 1. Search Videos & Shorts (`mode: "search"`)

```json
{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchKeywords": ["web scraping tutorial", "apify actors"],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 50,
  "sortBy": "view_count"
}
```

#### 2. Direct Video Details (`mode: "videos"`)

```json
{
  "mode": "videos",
  "videoUrlsOrIds": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcaHAuGxmY",
    "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ"
  ]
}
```

#### 3. Channel Scraper (`mode: "channel"`)

```json
{
  "mode": "channel",
  "channelUrlsOrHandles": ["@Apify", "@freecodecamp"],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 30
}
```

***

### 📤 Output Sample (Dataset Item)

```json
{
  "type": "video",
  "videoId": "5kcaHAuGxmY",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcaHAuGxmY",
  "title": "How to scrape ANY website with Apify’s Web Scraper API",
  "descriptionSnippet": "Learn how to scrape any website using Apify's modern web scraping tools...",
  "channelTitle": "Apify",
  "channelId": "UC68O3D5qYkQn-pC_e_f-kkg",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC68O3D5qYkQn-pC_e_f-kkg",
  "publishedTime": "1 year ago",
  "viewCountText": "42K views",
  "viewCount": 42688,
  "duration": "14:23",
  "durationSeconds": 863,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5kcaHAuGxmY/hqdefault.jpg",
  "badges": ["4K", "CC"],
  "isLive": false,
  "isShort": false,
  "searchQuery": "apify web scraping",
  "searchSort": "relevance",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-13T12:00:00.000Z"
}
```

***

### 🛡️ Anti-Throttling & Proxies

InnerTube requests work reliably without proxies for moderate volumes. For enterprise high-volume extractions (10,000+ queries/day), simply enable **Apify Proxy** in the input configuration to rotate residential or datacenter IPs automatically.

***

### 📄 License

Apache-2.0

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

Choose whether to search YouTube by keywords, fetch detailed video data by URLs/IDs, or scrape a channel.

## `searchKeywords` (type: `array`):

Keywords or search queries to run on YouTube (e.g. \['python tutorial', 'web scraping']). Used in 'Search' mode.

## `videoUrlsOrIds` (type: `array`):

List of YouTube video URLs (e.g. 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcaHAuGxmY') or raw video IDs. Used in 'Direct Video Details' mode.

## `channelUrlsOrHandles` (type: `array`):

List of YouTube channel URLs or handles (e.g. '@Apify', 'https://www.youtube.com/@Apify'). Used in 'Channel Scraper' mode.

## `maxResultsPerSearch` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of video results to return per keyword or channel.

## `sortBy` (type: `string`):

How to sort YouTube search results.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Apify Proxy configuration. InnerTube works well without proxies, but proxies help prevent throttling during high-volume jobs.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchKeywords": [
    "apify web scraping"
  ],
  "videoUrlsOrIds": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcaHAuGxmY"
  ],
  "channelUrlsOrHandles": [
    "@Apify"
  ],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 40,
  "sortBy": "relevance"
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "searchKeywords": [
        "apify web scraping"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("rbbscrap/fast-youtube-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "searchKeywords": ["apify web scraping"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("rbbscrap/fast-youtube-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "searchKeywords": [
    "apify web scraping"
  ]
}' |
apify call rbbscrap/fast-youtube-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,rbbscrap/fast-youtube-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/UxvuDHv28DAi7Xt17/builds/6zUO2BnuYAL9eMnrw/openapi.json