
Youtube Scraper | Youtube Channel Scraper
Pricing
$29.00/month + usage

Youtube Scraper | Youtube Channel Scraper
YouTube Channel Scraper is an Apify Actor that scrapes video data and comments from a YouTube channel. It extracts key details such as video title, URL, view count, streaming time (in days), hashtags, description, comments count, and individual comments with user IDs.
4.7 (4)
Pricing
$29.00/month + usage
5
Total users
15
Monthly users
9
Runs succeeded
>99%
Issues response
16 hours
Last modified
6 days ago
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.
⚠️ 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