YouTube Scraper | YouTube Channel Scraper - Extract Video Data & Comments - Apify Actor

YouTube Channel Scraper is a powerful Apify Actor that extracts comprehensive video data from YouTube channels. Perfect for content analysis, SEO research, brand monitoring, and social media analytics. Extract video metadata, comments, and engagement metrics with ease.

🔍 Key Features

• ✅ Comprehensive Video Data: Extract titles, URLs, view counts, durations, thumbnails, and video types (normal/shorts/live)
• ✅ Advanced Search: Filter videos within channels using YouTube's native search
• ✅ Smart Layout Handling: Works with both grid and rich item layouts
• ✅ Optimized Performance: Efficient scrolling and resource blocking
• ✅ Real-time Processing: Incremental data processing and immediate dataset storage
• ✅ Comment Analysis: Extract and filter comments for brand safety and engagement tracking
• ✅ SEO-Friendly Output: Structured JSON data perfect for SEO analysis and content strategy

📊 Use Cases

• Content Analysis: Track video performance and engagement metrics
• SEO Research: Analyze video titles, descriptions, and metadata
• Brand Monitoring: Track brand mentions in comments and video content
• Competitor Analysis: Monitor competitor channels and content strategy
• Social Media Analytics: Extract engagement data for social media reporting
• Market Research: Gather insights from video comments and viewer engagement

🚀 Features

• ✅ Scrapes video details: title, URL, views (converted to a number), duration, thumbnail, video type, and published date
• ✅ Search within channel: Direct search using channel's search URL for reliable results
• ✅ Handles different layouts: Works with both grid and rich item layouts
• ✅ Efficient scrolling: Optimized scrolling strategy for both channel videos and search results
• ✅ Incremental processing: Processes and pushes videos in chunks as they are found
• ✅ Resource optimization: Blocks unnecessary resources (stylesheets, fonts, media)
• ✅ Stores data in Apify Dataset: Outputs structured JSON data for easy export
• ✅ Configurable comment extraction: Set the maximum number of comments to extract per video
• ✅ User comment search: Filter comments by author substring using comments_user_search for brand safety, user engagement, and social comment analysis

📥 Input Parameters

The Actor accepts the following input parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description	Default Value
channel	string	A YouTube channel URL. The actor will append /videos if not present.	"https://www.youtube.com/@CHANEL"
search_query	string	Optional search term to filter videos on the channel. Leave empty to get all videos.	""
max_videos	integer	The maximum number of videos to process from the channel.	50
timeout	integer	Timeout in seconds for page operations.	300
video_details	boolean	If enabled, visits each video page to extract description and comments.	false
comments_max	integer	The maximum number of comments to extract per video (if video_details is enabled).	100
comments_user_search	string	Only include comments where the author's name contains this substring (case-insensitive). Useful for brand safety, user tracking, and social comment analysis.	""

Example Input

{
  "channel": "https://www.youtube.com/@CHANEL",
  "search_query": "perfume",
  "max_videos": 100,
  "timeout": 300,
  "video_details": true,
  "comments_max": 100,
  "comments_user_search": "chanel"
}

📤 Output

The Actor outputs a JSON dataset containing video details for each processed video. Here's an example of how the output looks in the Apify Console:

Example of scraped YouTube channel data : https://i.ibb.co/zVZc86kR/output.jpg

Output Fields

Field	Type	Description
duration	string	Video duration in MM:SS format
id	string	Unique YouTube video identifier
published	string	When the video was published (e.g., "4 days ago")
published_date	string	Actual date in YYYY-MM-DD format
thumbnail	string	High-quality thumbnail URL
title	string	Video title
type	string	Video type: "video", "short", or "live"
url	string	Full YouTube video URL
views	number	View count (converted from strings like "1.6M" to numbers)
description	string	Video description (if video_details is enabled)
comments	array	Array of extracted comments (if video_details is enabled, up to comments_max)

Sample Output Object

{
  "duration": "0:48",
  "id": "1eKokcaBwGg",
  "published": "4 days ago",
  "published_date": "2024-05-05",
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1eKokcaBwGg/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "title": "The Upcoming CHANEL Cruise 2025/26 Show — CHANEL Shows",
  "type": "video",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eKokcaBwGg",
  "views": 34000,
  "description": "...",
  "comments": [
    {
      "author": "@username",
      "text": "Comment text...",
      "likes": "5",
      "time": "2 days ago"
    }
    // ... up to comments_max comments ...
  ]
}

⚙️ How It Works

Channel Page Processing:

The Actor navigates to the provided YouTube channel URL:

• For regular scraping: appends /videos if not present
• For search: uses /search?query=... with the provided search term

Video Processing:

• Detects whether the page uses grid or rich item layout
• Extracts video information using optimized selectors
• Handles both regular videos and shorts
• Processes videos in chunks for efficient memory usage
• Optionally visits each video page to extract description and up to comments_max comments

Data Transformation:

• Converts view counts (e.g., "1.6M views") into numeric values
• Cleans and formats video durations
• Generates high-quality thumbnail URLs
• Identifies video types (normal/shorts/live)
• Converts relative dates to actual dates (YYYY-MM-DD format)

Result Storage:

All scraped data is pushed to an Apify Dataset in real-time, allowing for immediate access to the data as it's being collected.

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⚠️ Legal Disclaimer

This project is intended for educational and research purposes only. The use of this Actor must comply with YouTube's Terms of Service and robots.txt policies.

You are responsible for ensuring your use case does not violate YouTube website terms. YouTube's content and trademarks are the property of YouTube, Inc. Avoid aggressive scraping that could negatively impact YouTube's infrastructure. If you intend to use this Actor for commercial purposes, consider reaching out to the YouTube API team for official data access.

🤝 Contributing

Have ideas for improvements? Found a bug? We welcome your input! You can:

• Report issues or suggest improvements directly through the Apify Console
• Use the "Report issue" button on the Actor's page
• Contact us through Apify's support channels

Your feedback helps us improve this Actor and make it more useful for everyone!

🔧 Technical Details

Channel Page Processing

The Actor uses advanced techniques to process YouTube channel pages:

• Smart URL handling for videos and search
• Efficient resource blocking for optimal performance
• Intelligent scrolling for complete data extraction
• Robust error handling and retry mechanisms

Data Extraction

Our extraction process includes:

• Automatic layout detection (grid vs. rich item)
• View count normalization (K, M formats)
• Date standardization (YYYY-MM-DD)
• High-quality thumbnail generation
• Comment extraction with author filtering

Performance Optimizations

• Resource blocking (images, stylesheets, fonts)
• Efficient scrolling mechanisms
• Smart retry system
• Configurable timeouts
• Proxy support for reliable scraping

📈 SEO Benefits

• Structured Data: Clean, organized output perfect for SEO analysis
• Metadata Extraction: Get all video metadata for content optimization
• Engagement Metrics: Track views, comments, and user interaction
• Content Analysis: Analyze video titles and descriptions for SEO
• Competitor Insights: Monitor competitor content strategy
• Trend Analysis: Track video performance over time

Related Resources

• YouTube Shorts Scraper - Specialized scraper for YouTube Shorts
• Vimeo Video Scraper - Similar functionality for Vimeo