YouTube Video Data Scraper

Get YouTube video metadata as structured JSON. Title, description, channel, duration, views, likes, comment count, publish date and thumbnail — no login, no YouTube Data API key, no quota.

What it does

Takes one YouTube video URL and returns one dataset row of metadata. No pagination, no loop — one input, one record.

Works on regular videos, Shorts and past live streams. Any URL form works: youtube.com/watch?v=…, youtu.be/…, youtube.com/shorts/….

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
url	string	yes	—	YouTube video URL

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

Output

One row.

{
  "id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Never Gonna Give You Up",
  "description": "The official video for…",
  "channel": { "id": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw", "title": "Rick Astley", "handle": "@RickAstleyYT", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstleyYT" },
  "durationSec": 213,
  "counts": { "views": 1600000000, "likes": 18000000, "comments": 2300000 },
  "publishedAt": "2009-10-25T06:57:33.000Z",
  "publishedAtConfidence": "exact",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/hqdefault.jpg"
}

Field	Type	Notes
id	string	YouTube video id
url	string	Canonical watch URL
title	string	Video title
description	string	Full description text
channel	object	id, title, handle, url
durationSec	integer	Length in seconds
counts	object	views, likes, comments
publishedAt	string	ISO 8601
publishedAtConfidence	string	exact | parsed | unknown
thumbnailUrl	string	Thumbnail image URL

About publishedAtConfidence

YouTube renders ages as relative text — "2 weeks ago" — rather than timestamps. When that is all a source gives us, the date is computed from it and marked parsed. exact means a real timestamp arrived. unknown means neither did, and publishedAt is absent.

Most scrapers present a computed date as if it were exact. This one tells you which it is, so you can judge whether it is precise enough for your analysis.

Freshness

View and like counts are cached for up to 6 hours. Those numbers drift constantly, and re-fetching them on every call would cost you money for a number that changed by 0.001%. If you need a to-the-second count, this is not the right tool.

Titles, descriptions and durations effectively never change, so the cache costs you nothing on those.

What it does not do

• One video per run. For many videos, run once per URL.
• No transcript. Use a transcript actor with the same URL.
• No comments. Use the YouTube Comments Scraper.
• No dislike count. YouTube removed it publicly in 2021; anything claiming to return it is estimating.
• Private and age-restricted videos are out of reach.

Pricing

Charged per video. One run, one charge. Failed runs charge nothing.

Errors

Code	Meaning
BAD_REQUEST	Input missing, malformed, or not a URL this actor serves
NOT_FOUND	The target is private, removed, or does not exist
UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION	The URL resolved to a platform this actor does not serve
UPSTREAM_FAILED	Every upstream source failed — retry shortly
RATE_LIMITED	Too many requests; back off and retry
TIMEOUT	The source took longer than the actor's budget
UNAUTHORIZED	The actor's API credentials are invalid — contact the author
INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS	The account behind this actor is out of credits — contact the author
INTERNAL_ERROR	Unexpected failure

UNAUTHORIZED and INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS are on us, not you. If you see either, the actor is misconfigured on our side.

How it works

Three independent upstream sources serve this operation. If one is down or returns nothing usable, the next is tried inside the same run — no double charge, no retry on your side.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No.

How fresh are view counts? Up to 6 hours old. See Freshness above.

Does it work on Shorts? Yes.

Can I get the dislike count? No — YouTube made it private in 2021.

Can I pass a channel URL? No. Use the YouTube Channel Stats Scraper for channels.