YouTube Channel Scraper: all videos, Shorts, live streams and subscribers

Scrape every video, Short and live stream from YouTube channels without an API key or quota. Give it @handles, channel URLs or IDs and get each upload's title, link, views, upload time, duration and thumbnail, plus the channel's subscriber count, video count and description. Turn on full details for likes, comment count, exact publish date, category, description and tags.

You only pay for videos delivered. Channels that don't exist, empty tabs, invalid links and rate-limited requests are reported as clear error rows and never charged.

Why this channel scraper

• Whole channels, not just the first page. Videos, Shorts and Live tabs are paged to the end (or to your limit), newest first.
• Track new uploads cheaply. Set Only videos newer than (days) and the run stops at the first older video, so a daily schedule costs cents.
• No browser, no API key. It reads the same JSON the YouTube website loads: fast and light.
• Retries with backoff and a fresh IP on rate limits. Residential IPs are used only as a capped fallback.
• Clear errors: NOT_FOUND (channel doesn't exist), NO_DATA (for example, no Shorts tab), INVALID_INPUT, BLOCKED.

What you get

Field	Description
videoId, url, title	The upload (Shorts get a /shorts/ link)
channelName, channelHandle, channelId, channelUrl	The channel
channelSubscribers, channelVideoCountText, channelDescription	Channel stats
viewCount, viewCountText, publishedText, publishedAtApprox	Views and upload time
durationSeconds, durationText, isShort, isLive, channelTab, position	Format and position on the channel
likeCount, commentCount, publishDate, category, description, keywords	Full details mode

E-mail addresses in descriptions are replaced with [email removed]: we don't collect personal data.

How to scrape a YouTube channel

1. Add channels: @mkbhd, https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium, /channel/UC… links or IDs.
2. Choose the tabs: Videos, Shorts, Live (default Videos).
3. Set Max videos per channel tab and, optionally, Only videos newer than (days) or Full details.
4. Click Start and download JSON, CSV or Excel, or use the API.

Input example

{
  "channels": ["@mkbhd", "https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium"],
  "channelContent": ["videos", "shorts", "streams"],
  "maxResultsPerSource": 500,
  "newerThanDays": 30
}

Output example

{
  "status": "ok",
  "sourceType": "channel",
  "channelTab": "videos",
  "position": 1,
  "videoId": "…",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…",
  "title": "…",
  "channelName": "Marques Brownlee",
  "channelHandle": "@mkbhd",
  "channelSubscribers": 20000000,
  "viewCount": 2100000,
  "publishedText": "3 days ago",
  "durationSeconds": 1020,
  "isShort": false
}

Monitoring channels for new uploads

Add your channels, set Only videos newer than (days) to 1 and schedule the Actor daily. Connect a webhook, Slack, Make or Zapier to get each new upload. You pay only for new videos.

Pricing

Pay per event, no start fee:

Event	Free	Starter (Bronze)	Scale (Silver)	Business (Gold)
video: video, Short or live stream from a channel	$0.001	$0.0008	$0.0006	$0.0005
video-details: video with likes, comments and exact date	$0.003	$0.002	$0.0016	$0.0012

A 1,000-video channel costs $0.80 on the Starter plan. Errors and duplicates are free. Set a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly at that budget.

Use cases

• Competitor and creator analysis: every upload with views and length, to see what works.
• Influencer vetting: subscribers, upload frequency and recent performance.
• New-upload alerts for a list of channels.
• Datasets for AI: titles, descriptions and tags for whole channels. Pair with the ScrapeMole YouTube Transcript Scraper for the spoken text.

API, Python and AI agents

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("<APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("scrapemole/youtube-channel-scraper").call(run_input={"channels": ["@mkbhd"], "channelContent": ["videos"], "maxResultsPerSource": 200})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["title"], item.get("viewCount"))

Works with schedules, webhooks, Make, Zapier, n8n and Apify's MCP server for AI agents.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No key and no quota.

Can I search YouTube by keyword? Use the ScrapeMole YouTube Scraper (search, channels, playlists) or the YouTube Shorts Scraper. This Actor is for channels.

Why is publishedText empty for Shorts? YouTube doesn't show upload times for Shorts in channel lists. Turn on full details for exact dates.

Is this legal? The Actor collects publicly available video data and no personal data. You are responsible for how you use the data; check YouTube's terms and the laws that apply to you.

More from ScrapeMole

ScrapeMole builds focused, reliable scrapers for public data: pay per result, no start fees, clear error rows that are never charged, and a RUN_SUMMARY on every run.

• YouTube Transcript & Subtitles Scraper
• Google Trends Scraper
• YouTube Scraper
• YouTube Comments Scraper
• Telegram Channel Scraper
• Amazon Product & Search Scraper
• Google Jobs Scraper
• YouTube Shorts Scraper
• ATS Jobs Scraper: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable

Building an AI agent with its own wallet? The YouTube and Google Trends data is also sold per call over x402 (USDC on Base, no account): see scrapemole.pages.dev. Questions or a missing field? Open an issue on this Actor. ScrapeMole is the maker of this Actor.