YouTube Similar Channels Finder

Find similar and competitor YouTube channels for any seed channel or topic — ranked by topic overlap and audience size, not just raw keyword match.

Give it a channel (handle, URL, or ID) or a topic keyword, and it returns a clean, ranked list of related channels with full subscriber, view, and video stats — ready for competitor analysis, niche research, or creator outreach.

What you get

For every discovered channel:

• channelTitle and channelUrl — the channel name and a direct link
• subscriberCount, totalViews, videoCount — full public statistics
• sizeTier — nano (<10k), micro (10k–100k), mid (100k–1M), macro (1M–10M), or mega (>10M) so you can target channels in your own league
• overlapScore (0–100) — how similar the channel is to your seed, combining topic/keyword overlap with audience-size proximity
• sharedKeywords — the exact topic terms the channel has in common with your seed
• country and a trimmed channel description
• seedChannelId / seedChannelTitle — the seed (or topic) the result was matched against

Results are sorted by overlapScore descending, so the most relevant, best-fit channels are at the top. Impersonator, fan, and reupload clones are detected and pushed down automatically.

Use cases

• Competitor analysis — map out the channels competing for your audience and benchmark their size
• Find similar channels — discover creators in the same niche as any channel you admire
• Niche research — explore a topic (e.g. "home espresso machine reviews") and surface the channels that own it
• Creator outreach & partnerships — find channels in your size tier for collabs, sponsorships, or cross-promotion
• Influencer discovery — build shortlists of vetted channels with real subscriber and view counts

How to use

1. Enter a Seed Channel — a handle (@mkbhd), a channel URL, or a UC... channel ID. Or leave it blank and enter a Topic Query instead.
2. Optionally add a Topic Query to steer discovery toward a specific niche.
3. Set Max Results (default 25) — how many similar channels to return.
4. Set Max Searches (default 4) — how many discovery queries to run. Keep this low; more searches find more channels but take longer.
5. Run the actor — ranked results appear in the Dataset tab, ready to export to JSON, CSV, or Google Sheets.

You must provide at least one of Seed Channel or Topic Query.

Output format

Each dataset record:

{
  "seedChannelId": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
  "seedChannelTitle": "Marques Brownlee",
  "channelId": "UC...",
  "channelTitle": "UrAvgConsumer",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC...",
  "subscriberCount": 3440000,
  "totalViews": 612000000,
  "videoCount": 540,
  "country": "US",
  "sizeTier": "macro",
  "overlapScore": 25,
  "sharedKeywords": ["tech"],
  "description": "Helping you make smarter buying decisions ...",
  "status": "success"
}

When the seed cannot be resolved and no topic query is given, the run fails with a clear message. When a topic genuinely returns no channels, the run finishes cleanly with no rows.

How ranking works

• Topic overlap is the primary signal: the actor pulls keywords from the seed channel's title, description, and recent video titles (or from your topic query), then measures how many a candidate channel shares.
• Size proximity rewards channels in the same order of magnitude as your seed, so a 500k-subscriber channel surfaces peers of a similar scale rather than only the biggest names.
• Clone suppression detects impersonator, fan, and reupload channels (names that copy the seed) and ranks them far below genuine competitors.
• In topic-only mode (no seed channel), ranking blends topic overlap with channel popularity.

Related YouTube actors

Part of a complete YouTube toolkit — explore the rest of the suite:

• YouTube Channel Videos Scraper — List every video on a channel with metadata
• YouTube Video Metadata Scraper — Bulk video metadata — views, tags, chapters, more
• YouTube Transcript Scraper — Full transcripts and timestamped captions
• YouTube Comment Insights — Sentiment, keywords, and topics from comments
• YouTube Channel Growth Analyzer — Growth metrics, cadence, and best posting time
• YouTube Sponsorship & Brand Deal Tracker — Extract sponsors, brand deals, and promo codes
• YouTube Creator Contact Finder — Find a creator's email and social links
• YouTube Email Scraper — Bulk-extract contact emails from channels
• YouTube Thumbnail Downloader — Download video thumbnails in every size
• YouTube Video Downloader — Download videos as MP4 up to 1440p
• YouTube to MP3 Converter — Convert videos to MP3 audio (128–320 kbps)
• YouTube MCP Server — All YouTube tools for AI agents via MCP