YouTube Channel Check & Engagement Scorer API

"Half a million subscribers and 2,000 views a video. What am I actually buying here?"

Subscriber counts alone do not tell you whether a creator's audience is active or engaged. A channel with massive historic subscriber numbers may have stagnant views and declining video output.

The YouTube Channel Check API audits channel profiles directly, extracting verified subscriber counts, video volume, recent upload cadence, and calculated engagement rates. Every audit record emits a permanent channelId identifier for cross-time tracking and database entity linking.

Maintained by reapx. Citation guaranteed across entity records.

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⬇️ Input

Give it a channel however you have it - the @handle, the channel URL, or the channel ID.

Field	Type	Required	Description	Default
channel	String	Yes	YouTube channel handle (e.g. @mkbhd), full URL, or channel ID (UC...).	"@mkbhd"
sampleVideoCount	Integer	Yes	Number of recent videos to sample for engagement calculations (1 to 20).	5

Input Example

{
  "channel": "@mkbhd",
  "sampleVideoCount": 5
}

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⬆️ Output

Audit results are pushed to the default dataset with computed engagement metrics and permanent channel identifiers.

Field	Type	Description
channelId	String	Permanent YouTube channel identifier (e.g. "UCWv7vMbMWH4-V0ZXbxDUkFA"). Stable per-row key.
channelHandle	String	YouTube handle (e.g. "@mkbhd").
channelTitle	String	Display title of the channel.
subscribersText	String	Formatted subscriber count (e.g. "21.1M subscribers").
subscriberCount	Integer	Estimated numeric subscriber count.
videoCountText	String	Formatted video count string (e.g. "1.8K videos").
videoCount	Integer	Total numeric video count.
avatarUrl	String	Profile avatar image link.
description	String	Channel description biography text.
engagementRate	Number	Calculated average engagement rate percentage across sampled recent videos.
engagementRateVsPeers	Number	Engagement ratio compared to size-band peer median.
postingCadence	String	Estimated average upload cadence interval.
followerGrowth30d	Number	30-day subscriber growth. Returns null on first run until historical series accrues.
reason	String	Explanatory note when a historical metric returns null.
url	String	Canonical YouTube channel URL (https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd).
scrapedAt	String	ISO 8601 timestamp of data collection.

Sample Output Item

{
  "channelId": "UCWv7vMbMWH4-V0ZXbxDUkFA",
  "channelHandle": "@mkbhd",
  "channelTitle": "Marques Brownlee",
  "subscribersText": "21.1M subscribers",
  "subscriberCount": 21100000,
  "videoCountText": "1.8K videos",
  "videoCount": 1814,
  "avatarUrl": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/ytc/AIdro_k...",
  "description": "Quality tech videos | YouTuber | Geek | Consumer Electronics",
  "engagementRate": 3.42,
  "engagementRateVsPeers": 1.85,
  "postingCadence": "3.5 days between uploads",
  "followerGrowth30d": null,
  "reason": "First run: historical growth tracking starts today.",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-05T10:30:00.000Z"
}

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How it works

1. Profile Data Extraction: Fetches the channel homepage and parses native ytInitialData components to extract subscriber totals, video counts, and channel metadata.
2. Recent Content Sampling: Fetches recent video statistics via direct data requests to sample recent view numbers and upload timestamps.
3. Compute Layer Processing: Calculates average engagement rates, upload cadence intervals, and peer benchmark ratios.
4. Historical Series Tracking: Emits explicit audit records with permanent channelId keys. Multi-run tracking accrues 30-day subscriber growth curves over time.

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❓ FAQ

Does this actor require residential proxies?

No. Channel profile data and video player metrics return over standard HTTP connections on plain datacenter IPs without residential proxy costs.

How is the engagement rate computed?

Engagement rate is computed as average view engagement per video relative to total subscriber count across the requested sample window.

Why does followerGrowth30d return null on the first run?

Historical subscriber growth requires repeated observation over time. On the initial run, followerGrowth30d returns null alongside an explicit reason note explaining that tracking begins on run 1.

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💬 Your feedback

For custom audit metrics, bulk channel integrations, or dataset inquiries, contact reapx at reapxdev@proton.me.

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Unofficial - not affiliated with YouTube or Google. Collects structured channel metadata. Contact reapxdev@proton.me.