📺 YouTube Video Scraper — Search, Channel, Playlist & Single Video Data Extractor

The most reliable YouTube Video Scraper on Apify. Extract video titles, views, likes, channel info, thumbnails, durations, and descriptions from YouTube search results, channels, playlists, and single video pages — powered by real browser rendering. No YouTube API key needed.

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🆓 Try FREE for 2 hours — no credit card needed. Then just $6.99/month for unlimited YouTube video scraping across any search, channel, playlist, or video URL.

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📌 Table of Contents

• What Is This Actor?
• Why This Is the Best YouTube Video Scraper
• 💰 Pricing
• 4 Scraping Modes
• Use Cases
• Output Fields (Full Reference)
• Input Parameters
• Example Inputs & Outputs
• How the YouTube Video Scraper Works
• Supported URL Formats
• Proxy Configuration
• Performance & Speed
• FAQ
• Changelog
• Legal & Terms of Use

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🔍 What Is This Actor?

YouTube Video Scraper is a production-grade Apify actor that extracts complete video data from YouTube — search results, full channel libraries, playlists, and individual video pages — using a real browser engine that renders YouTube's dynamic JavaScript content exactly as a human user would see it.

This YouTube video scraper requires no YouTube Data API key, no Google account, and no login. It handles all four major YouTube content types in one unified interface: keyword search results, channel video grids, playlist video lists, and single video detail pages. Every run returns clean, structured JSON records with titles, view counts, durations, thumbnails, channel info, subscriber counts, and upload dates.

Whether you are a marketer analyzing YouTube search rankings, a researcher building a video dataset, a content creator tracking competitor channels, or a developer feeding YouTube data into an analytics pipeline — this YouTube video scraper gives you the data you need without API quotas or rate limits.

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🚀 Why This Is the Best YouTube Video Scraper

Feature	This Actor	YouTube Data API v3	Generic Scrapers
No API key required	✅	❌ Required + quota	✅
Real browser rendering	✅ Full JS render	❌ N/A	⚠️
Search results scraping	✅	✅	⚠️
Full channel video grid	✅ With scroll	✅	⚠️
Playlist extraction	✅	✅	⚠️
Single video detail	✅	✅	⚠️
Subscriber count	✅	✅	❌
Duration extraction	✅	✅	⚠️
Thumbnail URL	✅	✅	⚠️
API quota limits	✅ None	❌ 10,000 units/day	✅
Dynamic content (JS)	✅ Full render	❌ N/A	❌
Price	$6.99/mo	Free (limited quota)	Varies

This YouTube video scraper uses a real browser — it sees exactly what a user sees, including dynamically loaded video cards, subscriber counts, and view statistics rendered by YouTube's React frontend.

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💰 Pricing

🆓 Free Trial — 2 Hours, No Credit Card

Start your first YouTube video scraper run immediately with a full 2-hour free trial. No credit card. No signup friction. Click Try for free and paste your first YouTube URL or search query in under 60 seconds.

During the free trial you get:

• ✅ All 4 scraping modes — Search, Channel, Playlist, Single Video
• ✅ Full output — titles, views, subscribers, thumbnails, durations, descriptions
• ✅ Automatic scroll for loading more results
• ✅ Complete JSON output ready for dataset export

💳 Paid Plan — $6.99/Month

After the free trial, continue with $6.99/month — less than the cost of a single stock video clip. You get:

• ✅ Unlimited runs — scrape any YouTube search, channel, playlist, or video, as often as you need
• ✅ No YouTube API quota — zero daily limits, zero per-request costs
• ✅ All 4 scraping modes active
• ✅ Apify scheduling — automate weekly channel monitoring or daily search tracking
• ✅ Webhooks — push results to Slack, Google Sheets, email, or your app
• ✅ Apify API access — integrate YouTube data into any pipeline

💡 What $6.99/Month Gets You vs Alternatives

Tool	Price	API Key	Quota	All 4 Modes
This YouTube Video Scraper	$6.99/mo	❌ Not needed	✅ Unlimited	✅
YouTube Data API v3	Free	✅ Required	❌ 10K units/day	⚠️
SerpApi (YouTube)	$50/mo	✅ Required	❌ Credits	⚠️
ScraperAPI	$29/mo	✅ Required	❌ Credits	❌
Manual research	Free	❌	✅	✅ Hours wasted

🎯 $6.99/month with no API key and no quota limits — the most affordable way to get unlimited YouTube data for your projects.

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🎬 4 Scraping Modes

This YouTube video scraper supports four distinct input modes — auto-detected from the URL you provide:

🔍 Mode 1: YouTube Search Scraper

Provide a keyword or phrase and extract the top video results from YouTube search — exactly what appears on the search results page, in order.

Example use: "python tutorial 2024", "best lo-fi music", "product review iPhone 15"

What you get: Video title, channel name, views, upload date, duration, thumbnail, description snippet, video URL — for every result on the page.

📢 Mode 2: YouTube Channel Scraper

Provide a channel URL and extract all (or up to your max) videos from the channel's video grid — with automatic scroll to load more results.

Example use: Scrape all videos from a competitor's channel, monitor a creator's full library, collect all episodes of a video series.

What you get: All video fields plus channel name and subscriber count, extracted directly from the channel header.

📋 Mode 3: YouTube Playlist Scraper

Provide a playlist URL and extract all videos in the playlist in order — including title, channel, duration, and direct video URL.

Example use: Extract all videos in a course playlist, archive a curated video collection, scrape a YouTube music playlist.

🎬 Mode 4: Single Video Scraper

Provide a single YouTube video URL and extract the complete detail page — title, views, likes, channel name, subscriber count, upload date, and full description.

Example use: Track performance of a specific video over time, extract metadata for a video you want to analyze, pull description text for content research.

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🎯 Use Cases

📊 YouTube SEO & Content Research

Use this YouTube video scraper to extract search results for your target keywords — see which videos rank at the top, analyze their titles, thumbnail strategies, and view counts to inform your own content creation.

📈 Competitor Channel Monitoring

Scrape a competitor's full YouTube channel library. Track how many videos they publish, which formats get the most views, and what topics they are covering — automatically, every week.

🏗️ Building YouTube Data Pipelines

Feed YouTube video data into your analytics dashboard, recommendation engine, or content CMS. This YouTube video scraper returns clean JSON that integrates with any database or data pipeline via the Apify API.

🎓 Academic & Research Datasets

Build structured YouTube video datasets for media research, disinformation studies, content moderation research, or social science analysis. Extract metadata at scale without hitting YouTube API quotas.

🔔 Automated Content Monitoring

Schedule this YouTube video scraper to run daily or weekly on specific channels or search queries. Use Apify webhooks to alert your team whenever new videos matching your criteria appear.

💼 Influencer & Creator Research

Extract subscriber counts, view statistics, and content topics from multiple YouTube channels for influencer marketing research and brand partnership evaluation.

📱 App & Platform Development

Build YouTube-powered features into your app without managing YouTube API quotas. Use this scraper as your data source for search, channel listing, or video metadata display features.

📰 Journalism & Media Monitoring

Track YouTube videos related to news events, political topics, or public figures. Monitor specific channels for new uploads and extract engagement data as part of media research workflows.

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📋 Output Fields (Full Reference)

🔍 Search & Channel Mode Fields

Field	Type	Description	Example
title	string	Video title	"Python Tutorial for Beginners — Full Course"
video_id	string	YouTube 11-character video ID	"dQw4w9WgXcQ"
video_url	string	Full YouTube video page URL	"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=..."
channel_name	string	Creator channel name	"Programming with Mosh"
channel_url	string	Creator channel page URL	"https://www.youtube.com/@programmingwithmosh"
views_text	string	Human-readable view count	"4.2M views"
views	integer	Parsed numeric view count	4200000
uploaded	string	Relative upload time	"3 months ago"
duration	string	Video duration (MM:SS or HH:MM:SS)	"6:14:07"
duration_seconds	integer	Duration in seconds	22447
thumbnail	string	Video thumbnail image URL	"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/.../hqdefault.jpg"
description	string	Description snippet (max 300 chars)	"Learn Python programming from scratch..."

📢 Channel Mode — Extra Fields

Field	Type	Description	Example
subscribers	string	Channel subscriber count	"3.89M subscribers"

🎬 Single Video Mode — Extra Fields

Field	Type	Description	Example
published_date	string	Video publish date	"Nov 1, 2024"
likes	string	Like count (formatted)	"142K"
subscribers	string	Channel subscriber count	"2.1M subscribers"
description	string	Full video description (max 1000 chars)	"In this video we cover..."

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⚙️ Input Parameters

{
  "url":          "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
  "query":        "",
  "max_results":  20,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy":    true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
url	string	""	Any YouTube URL — video, channel, playlist, or search results page. Auto-detected.
query	string	""	YouTube keyword search query. Used when no URL is provided.
max_results	integer	20	Maximum number of video records to return
proxyConfiguration	object	Off	Apify proxy settings — recommended for large runs and channel scraping

Note: Provide either url or query — not both. If url is provided, query is ignored. The scraping mode (search / channel / playlist / video) is auto-detected from the URL structure.

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📦 Example Inputs & Outputs

Example 1: YouTube Search Scraper

Input:

{
  "query":       "machine learning tutorial 2024",
  "max_results": 10
}

Output:

[
  {
    "title":            "Machine Learning Full Course — 6 Hours | 2024",
    "video_id":         "abc123xyz45",
    "video_url":        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123xyz45",
    "channel_name":     "freeCodeCamp.org",
    "channel_url":      "https://www.youtube.com/@freecodecamp",
    "views_text":       "2.1M views",
    "views":            2100000,
    "uploaded":         "8 months ago",
    "duration":         "6:03:47",
    "duration_seconds": 21827,
    "thumbnail":        "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/abc123xyz45/hqdefault.jpg",
    "description":      "Learn machine learning from scratch with this comprehensive 6-hour course..."
  }
]

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Example 2: YouTube Channel Scraper

Input:

{
  "url":         "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
  "max_results": 15
}

Output:

[
  {
    "title":        "iPhone 16 Review: The Everyday Smartphone",
    "video_id":     "xyz789abc12",
    "video_url":    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyz789abc12",
    "channel_name": "Marques Brownlee",
    "channel_url":  "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
    "subscribers":  "18.9M subscribers",
    "views_text":   "5.3M views",
    "views":        5300000,
    "uploaded":     "1 month ago",
    "duration":     "17:42",
    "duration_seconds": 1062,
    "thumbnail":    "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xyz789abc12/hqdefault.jpg"
  }
]

---

Example 3: YouTube Playlist Scraper

Input:

{
  "url":         "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "max_results": 50
}

Output: Up to 50 video records from the playlist — in order — each with title, video ID, channel name, duration, thumbnail, and direct video URL.

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Example 4: Single YouTube Video

Input:

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
}

Output:

[
  {
    "title":          "Rick Astley — Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)",
    "video_id":       "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "video_url":      "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "channel_name":   "Rick Astley",
    "channel_url":    "https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstleyVEVO",
    "views_text":     "1.45B views",
    "likes":          "16M",
    "subscribers":    "4.2M subscribers",
    "published_date": "Oct 25, 2009",
    "description":    "The official video for 'Never Gonna Give You Up' by Rick Astley..."
  }
]

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Example 5: YouTube Search via URL

Input:

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=best+python+projects"
}

Output: Top YouTube search result videos for "best python projects" — with titles, views, channels, durations, and thumbnails — in the exact order YouTube ranks them.

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⚙️ How the YouTube Video Scraper Works

This YouTube video scraper uses a real Chromium browser — not a lightweight HTTP request — to load and render YouTube pages exactly as a human user would see them. Here is the step-by-step process:

Step 1 — URL Detection

The actor automatically detects what type of content you want: search results, channel, playlist, or single video — from the URL structure. A search query is converted to a YouTube search URL automatically.

Step 2 — Browser Launch

A headless Chromium browser starts with anti-detection settings — a real Chrome user agent, en-US locale, 1280×800 viewport, and navigator webdriver property hidden — to appear as a genuine user to YouTube.

Step 3 — Page Navigation

The browser navigates to the YouTube URL with smart navigation handling — commit mode first (for pages with redirects), then domcontentloaded as fallback — ensuring the page loads reliably even when YouTube redirects or lazy-loads content.

Step 4 — Content Loading & Scroll

The actor waits for the relevant YouTube content selectors to appear, then progressively scrolls the page to trigger YouTube's lazy-loading. Each scroll loads more video cards, which are collected incrementally until max_results is reached or no new content loads.

Step 5 — JavaScript Data Extraction

Custom JavaScript runs directly in the browser page, reading from YouTube's rendered DOM — extracting every data point from the actual video card elements: titles, links, view counts, durations, thumbnails, channel names, subscriber counts, and upload timestamps.

Step 6 — Data Enrichment

Raw extracted data is enriched: duration strings like "6:14:07" are parsed to seconds, thumbnail URLs are generated from video IDs for cards missing images, and view count text like "4.2M" is parsed to numeric integers.

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🔗 Supported URL Formats

Mode	URL Format	Example
Search	/results?search_query=...	youtube.com/results?search_query=python
Channel	/@handle	youtube.com/@mkbhd
Channel	/channel/UC...	youtube.com/channel/UCBcRF18a7Qf58cCRy5xuWwQ
Channel	/c/name	youtube.com/c/ProgrammingWithMosh
Channel	/user/name	youtube.com/user/TechChannel
Playlist	/playlist?list=PL...	youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxxxxxx
Video	/watch?v=...	youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Video	youtu.be/...	youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
Query	(text input)	"python tutorial for beginners"

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🌐 Proxy Configuration

Recommended Setup

{
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

When to Use Proxy

• Channel scraping with 50+ videos — scroll-heavy runs benefit from residential IPs
• High-frequency scheduled runs — avoid YouTube temporarily rate-limiting your scraper
• Geo-restricted content — use a proxy in the target region to access region-specific results
• Large batch runs — any run with max_results above 50

When Proxy Is Optional

• Small runs — under 20 results from a single URL
• One-off searches — single keyword searches or single video extractions
• Development and testing — low-volume testing runs

The actor uses a real Chromium browser with anti-detection settings, which handles most YouTube access without proxy for small volumes.

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⚡ Performance & Speed

Speed Benchmarks

Mode	Max Results	Estimated Time
Single video	1	~10–15 seconds
Search results	20	~20–40 seconds
Search results	50	~1–2 minutes
Channel videos	20	~30–60 seconds
Channel videos	100	~3–5 minutes
Playlist	50	~1–2 minutes

How Scroll Affects Speed

The actor scrolls the page to load more YouTube results. Each scroll adds approximately 10–20 new results and takes 1.5–2.5 seconds. For max_results: 100, expect 5–8 scroll cycles. Longer scroll runs are more affected by proxy quality and network speed.

Scheduling for Automated Monitoring

Use Apify's built-in scheduler to run this YouTube video scraper automatically — daily, weekly, or monthly. Combine with webhooks to push new video data to Google Sheets, Slack, email, or your analytics dashboard without manual intervention.

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❓ FAQ

Q: Do I need a YouTube API key? A: No. This YouTube video scraper uses a real browser to render and extract YouTube pages — no YouTube Data API, no Google account, no API key required. There are also no daily quota limits.

Q: How is this different from the YouTube Data API? A: The YouTube Data API is free but limited to 10,000 units per day, requires a Google account and API key, and is subject to quota restrictions. This YouTube video scraper has no quota, no API key requirement, and returns data from the actual rendered page — including data points the API sometimes hides or delays.

Q: Can I scrape all videos from a YouTube channel? A: Yes. Provide the channel URL with max_results set to however many videos you need. The actor scrolls the channel page automatically to load more video cards. For very large channels (1,000+ videos), run multiple times with increasing scroll counts.

Q: Why do some search results show "N/A" for views? A: YouTube sometimes does not display view counts on search result cards for very new videos or live streams. In those cases, views_text will be empty or absent.

Q: Does this work for YouTube Shorts? A: YouTube Shorts appear in channel grids and search results and are extracted like regular videos. The duration field will reflect their short length (under 60 seconds).

Q: Can I get the full video description? A: Full descriptions (up to 1000 characters) are extracted in Single Video mode only. In Search and Channel modes, a snippet (up to 300 characters) is returned when visible on the card.

Q: What is the 2-hour free trial? A: The free trial gives you complete access to all 4 scraping modes and all output fields for 2 hours with no credit card required. After the trial, subscribe for $6.99/month to continue with unlimited runs.

Q: Can I export results to Excel or Google Sheets? A: Yes — download the dataset as CSV from the Apify Output tab (opens correctly in Excel and Google Sheets), or use Apify's Google Sheets integration to push results automatically after each run.

Q: Does this scraper work for YouTube channels with millions of subscribers? A: Yes. Channel size does not affect extraction — the actor scrapes whatever is visible in the channel's video grid after scrolling. Set max_results to control how many videos to collect.

Q: Can I track the same channel over time? A: Yes — schedule this YouTube video scraper to run weekly on a channel URL. Compare results across runs to track new uploads, view count growth, and engagement trends over time.

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📜 Changelog

v2.0.0 (Current)

• ✅ Improved navigation strategy — commit mode first with ERR_ABORTED redirect handling
• ✅ Channel mode: extracts channel name and subscriber count from header using 7 selector fallbacks
• ✅ Channel mode: multi-source metadata spans for views and upload date
• ✅ View count parsing: "4.2M views" → 4200000 numeric integer
• ✅ Thumbnail fallback: generates hqdefault.jpg URL from video ID when no thumbnail on card
• ✅ Duration seconds: auto-parsed from duration string ("6:14:07" → 22447)
• ✅ Anti-detection: navigator webdriver property hidden, real Chrome user agent
• ✅ Smart scroll: progressive scroll with new-item detection and early stop
• ✅ URL prefix cleaning: strips accidental "URL: ", "Link: " prefixes from input

v1.0.0

• ✅ Initial release with search and channel scraping
• ✅ Playwright browser rendering
• ✅ Basic title, views, duration, thumbnail extraction

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⚖️ Legal & Terms of Use

This YouTube video scraper extracts publicly accessible video metadata from YouTube — the same information visible to any user browsing YouTube without an account.

Please follow these guidelines:

• Use extracted data for legitimate research, content analysis, SEO, and business intelligence purposes
• Respect YouTube's Terms of Service — do not use this tool to circumvent YouTube's access controls or scrape at volumes that impact YouTube's services
• Extracted metadata (titles, view counts, descriptions, thumbnails) is factual public information — its use for research and analysis is broadly accepted
• Do not use extracted video URLs or thumbnails for unauthorized commercial redistribution of YouTube's content
• YouTube video content (the actual video files) remains subject to YouTube's and creators' copyright

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🤝 Support & Feedback

• Bug or broken mode? Contact via the Apify actor page — we fix issues fast
• Feature request? Suggest via the Apify Community forum or actor page
• Loving it? Please leave a ⭐ review — it helps other marketers and researchers find this YouTube video scraper!

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🆓 2-hour free trial → 💳 $6.99/month after — the most affordable YouTube video scraper with real browser rendering and no API key.

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Built with ❤️ on Apify · YouTube Video Scraper — Search, Channel, Playlist & Video
Extract YouTube video data from any URL or search query — no API key, no quota, no limits