YouTube Comments Scraper: replies, likes and hearts

Export the comments of any YouTube video, Short or live replay, or of a whole playlist or channel, with their replies, likes, reply counts, authors, and pinned and creator-hearted flags. Choose Top or Newest first, cap how many you want, and download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel, or call the Actor from your code, n8n, Make, Zapier or an AI agent through MCP.

You only pay for comments that are delivered. Listing the videos of a playlist or channel is free. Videos with comments turned off, missing videos and invalid links are reported in the results but never charged.

What you get for each comment

Field	Description
text	The comment text
authorName, authorChannelId, authorUrl, authorAvatarUrl	Who wrote it
authorIsVerified, authorIsVideoOwner	Verified badge, and whether the video's creator wrote it
likes, likesText	Like count as a number (YouTube rounds large counts, e.g. 44K becomes 44000) and as shown
replyCount	How many replies the comment has
isPinned, isHeartedByCreator, isEdited	Pinned by the creator, hearted by the creator, edited
publishedTimeText, publishedAtApprox	As shown on YouTube ("6 years ago") and an approximate date
isReply, parentCommentId	For replies: which comment they answer
commentId, commentUrl	A direct link that opens the video at this comment
videoId, videoTitle, videoChannel, videoCommentCount	The video, and its total comment count as YouTube shows it (includes replies)
position	Order of the comment in the sort you chose
sourceType, sourceTitle, sourcePosition	For videos that came from a playlist or channel

Example output

{
  "videoId": "5MuIMqhT8DM",
  "videoTitle": "Sleep Is Your Superpower | Matt Walker | TED",
  "videoChannel": "TED",
  "videoCommentCount": 11646,
  "status": "ok",
  "position": 1,
  "commentId": "UgxWiXiUQDz1CSmjIr14AaABAg",
  "commentUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MuIMqhT8DM&lc=UgxWiXiUQDz1CSmjIr14AaABAg",
  "text": "That moment when you‘re watching this at 2 am",
  "authorName": "@ninopreuss2549",
  "authorIsVerified": false,
  "authorIsVideoOwner": false,
  "likes": 44000,
  "likesText": "44K",
  "replyCount": 897,
  "isPinned": false,
  "isHeartedByCreator": false,
  "publishedTimeText": "6 years ago",
  "publishedAtApprox": "2020-10-19",
  "isReply": false,
  "parentCommentId": null
}

Features

• Videos, playlists and channels. Paste video links, a playlist link, or a channel link (@handle, /channel/UC…). For channels, choose regular videos, Shorts, past live streams or all uploads, newest first.
• Top or newest. The same two sort options YouTube shows under a video.
• Replies when you want them. Turn on replies and set how many per comment. Replies come right after their parent comment, linked by parentCommentId.
• Creator signals. Pinned comments, comments hearted by the creator and comments written by the creator are flagged, which makes it easy to find what the creator engaged with.
• Fast and light. No browser: it reads YouTube's own comment data, 20 comments per request, several videos in parallel, with residential proxy and automatic retries.
• Clear errors. Every input gets a row. Failed rows have an error code (comments_disabled, unavailable, no_comments, playlist_not_found, channel_not_found, blocked…) and a plain-English errorMessage.

Tested before release

• Mixed run: a popular TED talk, a Short, a Romanian news video, a video with comments turned off, a video ID that does not exist and the @TED channel (2 newest videos), with replies on. Result: 156 comments and 341 replies from the 5 readable videos in 2.5 minutes; the two bad inputs got comments_disabled and unavailable rows and were not charged.
• Deep run: 300 comments newest-first from one video plus a playlist. Result: 600 comments in 30 seconds, no duplicates across 15 pages, the duplicate video in the playlist skipped.

How to use

1. Paste YouTube links into YouTube videos, playlists or channels.
2. Set Max comments per video (default 100, 0 = all) and the sort order.
3. Optional: turn on Include replies and set how many per comment.
4. For playlists and channels, set how many videos to take.
5. Click Start and open the Output tab, or export the dataset.

Use it from code

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("sblabs/youtube-comments-scraper").call(run_input={
    "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MuIMqhT8DM"],
    "maxComments": 500,
    "sort": "newest",
    "includeReplies": True,
    "maxRepliesPerComment": 5,
})
for c in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if c["status"] == "ok":
        print(c["likes"], c["text"][:80])

Use it from an AI agent (MCP)

Add the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com) to Claude, Cursor or any MCP client and ask: "Get the top 200 comments of this YouTube video and summarize what viewers liked and disliked."

Pricing

Pay per event: one charge per delivered comment or reply, at the price shown on the Pricing tab. Listing playlist and channel videos, failed videos and error rows are free. Proxy and compute are included. Set a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly when it reaches it.

Input options

Option	Default	Notes
videos	—	Video, playlist or channel links, or video IDs. Required
maxComments	100	Top-level comments per video, 0 = all
sort	top	top or newest
includeReplies	false	Also collect replies
maxRepliesPerComment	10	Replies per comment when replies are on, 0 = all
maxVideosPerSource	10	Videos taken from each playlist or channel, 0 = all (up to 5,000)
channelContent	videos	videos, shorts, streams or all. A channel link ending in /shorts or /streams picks that tab
maxConcurrency	5	Videos processed in parallel
maxRetries	3	Retries with a fresh IP on blocks or dropped connections
proxyConfiguration	Residential	Recommended for YouTube

FAQ

Are like counts exact? YouTube shows exact counts below 1,000 and rounded counts above (1.2K, 44K). likes converts those to numbers, so large values are approximate; likesText keeps the original.

Why is publishedAtApprox approximate? YouTube only shows relative times such as "3 weeks ago". The Actor converts them to a date counted back from the run, so older comments can be off by a few days or weeks.

Does videoCommentCount match the number of rows? Not exactly. YouTube's count includes replies and can include comments held for review, so it is usually a little higher than the top-level comments you get.

Is it legal? The Actor reads publicly visible comments. You are responsible for how you use the data, including YouTube's terms and privacy laws such as GDPR, since comments are personal data. Use it for research, moderation and analysis, not to contact or profile individual users.

Something broke? Open an issue on the Issues tab with the video link and it will be looked at quickly.

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