YouTube Channel Scraper

Extract videos from any public YouTube channel: titles, view counts, durations, thumbnails, published dates, plus channel metadata (name, handle, subscriber count). No API key required.

What It Does

• Accepts @handle, full channel URLs, or /channel/UCxxx URLs (legacy /c/name and /user/name also work)
• Extracts channel identity: name, handle, canonical URL, subscriber count, channel ID
• Extracts per-video data: title, views, duration, thumbnail, publication date, Shorts flag
• Detects YouTube Shorts automatically (flagged with is_short: true)
• RSS feed fallback if the channel page is temporarily unavailable
• HTTP-only Go actor, runs on 128 MB RAM

Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
channelUrls	array	required	YouTube channel URLs or @handles to scrape
maxVideos	integer	200	Maximum videos per channel (0 = unlimited)
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify proxy	Proxy settings (datacenter works fine)

Example Input

{
  "channelUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@example_channel",
    "@another_example"
  ],
  "maxVideos": 100
}

Output

Each row is one video with channel context embedded:

Field	Type	Description
channel_id	string	YouTube channel ID (UCxxx format)
channel_name	string	Channel display name
channel_handle	string	Channel @handle
channel_url	string	Canonical channel URL
channel_subscribers	string	Subscriber count as YouTube displays it
video_id	string	YouTube video ID
title	string	Video title
published_at	string	Publication time (relative, e.g. "2 years ago")
duration	string	MM:SS or H:MM:SS
view_count	integer	View count (null if unavailable)
thumbnail_url	string	Thumbnail URL (highest resolution)
video_url	string	Full video URL (uses /shorts/ for Shorts)
is_short	boolean	Whether this is a YouTube Short
scraped_at	string	ISO 8601 scrape timestamp

Example Output

{
  "channel_id": "UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "channel_name": "Example Channel",
  "channel_handle": "@example_channel",
  "channel_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@example_channel",
  "channel_subscribers": "1.2M subscribers",
  "video_id": "abcDEF12345",
  "title": "Example Video Title",
  "published_at": "3 months ago",
  "duration": "12:34",
  "view_count": 154000,
  "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/abcDEF12345/hqdefault.jpg",
  "video_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abcDEF12345",
  "is_short": false,
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-18T09:00:00Z"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: you only pay for videos actually returned.

Event	Suggested price
Actor start	$0.001 (one-time per run)
Per video result	$0.0008

Final prices are set in the Apify Console before publish.

Notes

• The scraper reads the /videos tab of each channel. Shorts appearing in that tab are flagged with is_short: true; the /shorts/ and /live/ tabs are not scraped separately.
• Pagination is handled automatically via YouTube's internal InnerTube API for channels with hundreds of videos.
• published_at is the relative time string YouTube displays (e.g. "2 years ago"), not an absolute timestamp.
• view_count is parsed to an integer where possible; live streams and some Shorts may return null.
• Age-restricted or region-blocked channels may return partial results.

Related Actors

• Instagram Scraper - profiles and recent posts
• Twitter Profile Scraper - profile stats and recent tweets
• TikTok Profile Scraper - profile stats and recent videos
• Social Media Email Scraper - discover social URLs from a company website

For bug reports or feature requests, open an issue on the actor's Issues tab.