YouTube Playlist Scraper - Videos, Durations & Views

Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google LLC or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. "YouTube" is referenced only to describe the publicly available website this Actor collects data from.

Extract the videos from any public YouTube playlist and export them to JSON, CSV or Excel: playlist position, title, video ID, watch URL, channel, duration in seconds, view count, upload age and thumbnail - plus a summary row with the playlist's own title, owner and totals.

YouTube serves 100 videos per page and this Actor pages through the whole playlist - up to YouTube's own 5,000-item maximum. No login, no API key, no YouTube Data API quota.

What you get

Playlist order preserved	Every row carries its position, so the export is the playlist, not a bag of videos
Numbers, not strings	durationSeconds and viewCount are parsed for you, alongside the raw 2:32 / 234K views text
Past the first page	Full pagination - every video in the playlist, up to YouTube's own 5,000-item maximum
Playlist summary	One playlist row per playlist: title, description, owner channel and ID, total video and view counts
Any playlist reference	A playlist URL, any watch URL carrying list=, or a bare ID (PL..., UU..., OLAK...)
Bulk import	Paste hundreds of playlists, or link a .txt / .csv / Google Sheet / Drive file
Filters that cost nothing	Title keyword and min/max duration are applied before billing - filtered rows are never charged
Monitor mode	Remembers what it has seen, so a scheduled run returns only videos newly added to the playlist

Use cases

• Course and tutorial libraries - export a whole training playlist with durations, then total the run-time.
• Channel's full back-catalogue - point it at a channel's UU... uploads playlist to walk every upload, not just the recent ones.
• Content audits - find every video in a playlist over 20 minutes, or every one whose title mentions a product.
• Watch-list building - hand a downstream tool a clean, ordered list of video IDs.
• Monitoring - schedule it with Monitor mode to be told only when a playlist gains a video.
• LLM pipelines - a clean ordered manifest of video IDs to feed a transcript or summarisation step.

How to use

1. Sign up for Apify - the free plan is enough to try this Actor.
2. Open the YouTube Playlist Scraper and paste one or more playlist references - a playlist URL, any watch URL carrying list=, or a bare ID (PL..., UU..., OLAK...).
3. Set Max videos per playlist if you want a cap, then click Start.
4. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or RSS - or pull results programmatically through the Apify API.

To walk a channel's whole upload history, take its channel ID and swap the leading UC for UU - that is the channel's uploads playlist.

Input

One playlist:

{ "playlistUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbpi6ZahtOH6Blw3RGYpWkSByi_T7Rygb"] }

A channel's most recent uploads (a channel's uploads playlist is its channel ID with UC swapped for UU):

{ "playlistUrls": ["UULA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ"], "maxVideosPerPlaylist": 1000 }

Long-form videos only, matching a keyword:

{
  "playlistUrls": ["UULA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ"],
  "containsText": "space",
  "minDurationSeconds": 60,
  "maxVideosPerPlaylist": 1000
}

Just the playlist headers, for a library audit:

{ "playlistUrls": ["PL...", "PL...", "PL..."], "includeVideos": false }

Bulk - paste a block, or link a file, into Import playlists from a file:

UULA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ
PLbpi6ZahtOH6Blw3RGYpWkSByi_T7Rygb
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL590L5WQmH8dpP0RyH5pCfIaDEdt9nk7r

Output

A playlistVideo row:

{
  "type": "playlistVideo",
  "playlistId": "UULA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ",
  "playlistTitle": "Uploads from NASA",
  "playlistOwner": "NASA",
  "position": 1,
  "videoId": "90Kgw_SvK4w",
  "title": "What It Takes",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Kgw_SvK4w&list=UULA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ",
  "channel": "NASA",
  "durationText": "2:32",
  "durationSeconds": 152,
  "viewsText": "234K views",
  "viewCount": 234000,
  "publishedText": "2 days ago",
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/90Kgw_SvK4w/hqdefault.jpg"
}

A playlist row:

{
  "type": "playlist",
  "playlistId": "UULA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ",
  "playlistTitle": "Uploads from NASA",
  "playlistOwner": "NASA",
  "playlistOwnerId": "UCLA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ",
  "videoCountText": "6,176 videos",
  "videoCount": 6176,
  "viewsText": "1,911,811 views",
  "viewCount": 1911811,
  "videosReturned": 1000
}

Three dataset views ship with the Actor: Videos, Durations & views and Playlist summary.

Good to know

• Depth is limited only by YouTube's own 5,000-item playlist maximum. Every run reports both videoCount (what the playlist holds) and videosReturned (what you asked for and got), so a capped run is never ambiguous.
• The whole back-catalogue, not the first two pages. YouTube's own logged-out pagination gives out after a couple of pages. This Actor addresses each page directly by offset instead, so a channel's entire uploads playlist stays reachable.
• Public playlists only. Private, unlisted-without-the-link and deleted playlists are not readable; the run says so by name and charges nothing for them.
• YouTube hides unavailable entries. Deleted and private videos inside a playlist are removed by YouTube itself, so videoCount from the header can exceed the rows returned. Both numbers are in the output (videoCount vs videosReturned) so the gap is visible rather than silent.
• viewCount is rounded by YouTube on video rows (234K views → 234000). The playlist-level viewCount is exact. Both raw strings are kept.
• publishedText is relative (2 days ago) because that is what YouTube publishes on a playlist page - there is no absolute upload date on this surface.
• description is often empty on auto-generated playlists such as a channel's uploads; user-made playlists usually have one.
• Duration is absent for a live stream or premiere that has not finished; those rows carry durationSeconds: null.

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube?

This Actor uses Apify's pay-per-event pricing: you are charged only for the results it delivers, with no monthly rental and no start fee. The events it can charge are:

• Playlist video scraped - Charged once per video written to your dataset - playlist position, title, video ID, watch URL, channel, duration in seconds, view count and upload age. Videos removed by your filters, videos already seen in monitor mode, and playlists that are not public are never charged.
• Playlist summary - Charged once per playlist when the summary row is switched on - title, description, owner channel, total video and view counts and the thumbnail. Turn off 'Include a playlist summary row' to skip it entirely.

The current price of each event is shown on the Pricing tab of this page. Set a maximum total charge on the run if you want a hard cap on spend, and use the input limits to control how much the Actor fetches.

Automate & schedule

Run this Actor on autopilot and pull results into your own stack:

• Apify API - start runs, fetch datasets and manage schedules over REST.
• apify-client for JavaScript and apify-client for Python - official SDKs.
• Schedules - run it hourly, daily or weekly and keep your dataset current.
• Webhooks - trigger downstream actions (CRM import, Slack alert, email sequence) the moment a run finishes.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('scrapesage/youtube-playlist-scraper').call({
    "playlistUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbpi6ZahtOH6Blw3RGYpWkSByi_T7Rygb"
    ],
    "maxVideosPerPlaylist": 1000,
    "includePlaylistSummary": true
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} records`);

Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to thousands of apps - no code required:

• Make - multi-step automation scenarios.
• Zapier - push new records straight into your CRM or spreadsheet.
• Slack - get notified when a scheduled run finds something new.
• Google Drive / Sheets - auto-export every run to a spreadsheet.
• Airbyte - pipe results into your data warehouse.
• GitHub - trigger runs from commits or releases.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

The output is clean, LLM-ready JSON. You can call this Actor from Claude, ChatGPT or any agent framework through the Apify MCP server - describe the data you need and let the assistant run this Actor for you.

Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is agent-ready — AI agents can discover it, run it, and pay for it autonomously, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses pay-per-event pricing and limited permissions, so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

• x402 — an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the Apify MCP server — no account, no API key.
• Skyfire — agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

More scrapers from scrapesage

Related Actors in the same category:

• YouTube Scraper - Channels, Videos & Creator Leads
• Instagram Reels Scraper - Plays, Views & Analytics
• TikTok Scraper - Profiles, Videos, Stats & Creator Leads
• Bilibili Scraper - Videos, Trending, Comments & Creator Leads
• Douban Scraper - Movies, TV, Books, Music & Reviews

Tips

• A channel's uploads playlist is its channel ID with UC swapped for UU - the simplest way to export a full back-catalogue in one run.
• Audit a library cheaply. Set includeVideos to false to pull just the playlist headers - title, owner, video and view totals - across hundreds of playlists.
• Filter before you pay. containsText and the min/max duration filters are applied before billing, so a keyword or long-form-only export costs only what it returns.
• Total the run-time by summing durationSeconds - it is already parsed, so no 2:32 string maths.
• Watch a playlist with monitor mode on a Schedule and you are charged only for videos newly added.

FAQ

How is this Actor billed? Pay-per-event: you pay only for the results it delivers, with no monthly rental and no start fee. The per-event price is shown on the Pricing tab.

Can I schedule it and get results automatically? Yes - create a Schedule and add a webhook or an integration (Google Sheets, Slack, Make, Zapier) to push each run's dataset wherever you need it.

Which export formats are available? Every run's dataset can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, HTML or RSS from the Apify Console or the API.

Can I run it from code or an AI agent? Yes - through the Apify API and client libraries, or from Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants via the Apify MCP server.

Is it legal to scrape YouTube? This Actor collects publicly available data only. You are responsible for using the output in compliance with applicable laws (including data-protection law where personal data is involved) and the source's terms. See the Disclaimer below.

Is this an official YouTube tool? No. It is an independent, third-party Actor with no affiliation to, endorsement by or sponsorship from Google LLC. See the Disclaimer below.

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google LLC or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

"YouTube" and any related marks are the property of their respective owners and are used here only in a descriptive, nominative sense - to identify the publicly accessible website from which this Actor collects data. This Actor is not an official YouTube product, is not authorised or certified by Google LLC, and does not distribute YouTube software. It collects only publicly available information; you are responsible for ensuring your use of that data complies with applicable laws, regulations and the terms of the source website.

Need help?

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab, or visit the Apify help center. Feature requests are welcome - this Actor is actively maintained.