YouTube Scraper: Channel, Playlist & Community Data Insights

YouTube Scraper — Channels, Playlists and Community Posts

YouTube Scraper: Channel, Playlist & Community Data Insights exports entire YouTube channels and playlists in one run, not just single videos. Point it at a channel URL and it expands to every video and Short the channel has published, enriched with About-tab data (subscribers, lifetime views, joined date, country). Point it at a playlist URL and it expands every member video in exact playlist order. Keyword search and single-video scraping still work as a full superset. It's built for content researchers, competitive analysts, and data teams who need a channel's complete catalog, not a sample.

What is YouTube Scraper: Channel, Playlist & Community Data Insights?

YouTube Scraper: Channel, Playlist & Community Data Insights is an Apify Actor that expands YouTube channel and playlist URLs into their full contents, plus optional Community-tab posts, transcripts, and keyword search. Key capabilities:

• Expand a channel URL/@handle into every long-form video and Short (newest first), or a playlist URL into every member video in exact order
• Enrich channel-discovered videos with real About-tab data: subscriber count, lifetime views, joined date, country, verified badge, external links
• Optionally scrape each channel's Community tab (text/image/poll posts with likes and comments)
• Alternative keyword-search mode with the full range of YouTube's own search filters (upload date, content type, video length, HD/4K/HDR/360°/VR180/Creative Commons, and more)
• Optionally download transcripts/subtitles for every scraped video, in SRT, plain text, or timestamped JSON
• Automatic proxy escalation (direct → datacenter → residential) on blocks, locking onto residential for the rest of the run

What data can I extract with YouTube Scraper: Channel, Playlist & Community Data Insights?

Field	Example Value	Use Case
title / id / url	"How Things Work" / video ID / video link	Identify and link to the video
viewCount / likes / commentsCount	1200000 / 45000 / 3200	Core engagement metrics
date / duration	"2026-07-20" / "12:34"	Timing and length
channelName / channelUrl	"MrBeast" / channel link	Identify the uploading channel
channelNumberOfSubscribers / channelJoinedDate / channelCountry / channelIsVerified	220000000 / "Feb 20, 2012" / "US" / true	Channel About-tab data (opt-in)
playlistTitle / playlistPosition	"Best Of 2026" / 3	Position within a playlist expansion
postAuthor / postText / postLikeCount / postCommentCount / postAttachmentType	"MrBeast" / "New video dropping..." / "12K" / "340" / "image"	Community-tab post data (opt-in)
subtitles	transcript text/SRT/JSON	Full video transcript (opt-in)
type / discoveryMode / isChild	"video" / "channel" / false	Distinguish row types and how each row was discovered
descriptionLinks / channelExternalLinks / hashtags	link lists / social links / hashtag list	Additional structured content

Real channel and playlist expansion, with genuine About-tab enrichment

Channel and playlist expansion is this Actor's core feature: a single channel URL fetches every video and Short from the channel's own Videos/Shorts tabs (not a search-result sample), and a playlist URL fetches every member video in its true playlist order, with playlistPosition on every row. includeChannelAbout adds real subscriber count, lifetime view total, joined date, country, and verified status from the channel's own About tab — plus one extra channelProfile summary row per channel — genuine data from the channel page itself, not estimated.

Community posts and transcripts, both opt-in

includeCommunityPosts (off by default, since it costs an extra request per channel) scrapes each channel's Community tab — text, image, and poll posts — as separate rows linked back to the channel. fetchTranscripts downloads real subtitle/transcript data when YouTube makes it available, in your choice of format, with preferAutoCaptions widening language coverage by falling back to auto-generated captions.

Why not build this yourself?

YouTube's official Data API v3 does expose channel and playlist listing endpoints, but quota costs scale quickly for full-catalog exports (especially combined with Community-tab data, which the official API doesn't expose to third parties at all), and there's no built-in transcript-download or About-tab enrichment bundled together. Building an equivalent tool yourself means handling channel/playlist pagination at scale and adding Community-tab scraping, which has no official API surface whatsoever. All of that is already implemented in this Actor's source.

How to use data extracted from YouTube?

Content research and competitive channel analysis

Expand a competitor's channel URL with includeChannelAbout on to get their full video catalog plus real subscriber/view totals, using channelNumberOfSubscribers and view counts together to benchmark content performance relative to audience size.

Playlist-based content curation

Expand a curated playlist URL to pull every member video in exact order with playlistPosition, useful for archiving or re-publishing a curated content sequence with its original structure intact.

Community engagement research

Enable includeCommunityPosts on a set of channels in your niche to see what kind of Community-tab content (polls, announcements, images) drives the most postLikeCount/postCommentCount, informing your own community-engagement strategy.

AI agents and automated pipelines

An agent can call this Actor to pull a channel's full video catalog plus transcripts, using subtitles as structured text input for a downstream summarization or content-analysis pipeline.

🔼 Input sample

Parameter	Required	Type	Description	Example Value
targetUrls	No	array	Channel, playlist, or direct video/Shorts URLs	["https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"]
maxChannelVideos	No	integer (0-5,000)	Long-form videos fetched per channel	50 (default)
maxChannelShorts	No	integer (0-5,000)	Shorts fetched per channel; 0 = skip	0 (default)
includeChannelAbout	No	boolean	Enrich with real About-tab data + one summary row per channel	true (default)
maxPlaylistVideos	No	integer (0-5,000)	Playlist member videos expanded; 0 = unlimited	0 (default)
includeCommunityPosts	No	boolean	Scrape each channel's Community tab	false (default)
maxCommunityPostsPerChannel	No	integer (0-500)	Community posts collected per channel when enabled	20 (default)
searchQueries	No	array	Keyword search terms, alternative to URL discovery	["fitness workout"]
videosPerQuery / shortsPerQuery / streamsPerQuery	No	integer (0-9,999)	Long-form/Shorts/live results per search query	10, 0, 0 (defaults)
fetchTranscripts	No	boolean	Download subtitles/transcripts for every scraped video	false (default)
storeTranscriptsInKvs	No	boolean	Save transcripts to the Key-Value Store	false (default)
transcriptLanguage	No	string (enum)	Preferred transcript language	"en" (default)
preferAutoCaptions	No	boolean	Prefer auto-generated captions for wider coverage	false (default)
transcriptFormat	No	string (enum)	srt (default), text, or timestamp	"srt"
resultsSortOrder	No	string (enum)	Sort keyword-search results	"relevance"
uploadDateFilter / contentTypeFilter / videoLengthFilter	No	string (enum)	YouTube-style search filters (keyword search only)	"week", "video", "long"
videoIsHD / videoHasCC / videoIsCreativeCommons / videoIs3D / videoIsLive / videoIsPurchased / videoIs4K / videoIs360 / videoHasLocation / videoIsHDR / videoIsVR180	No	boolean	Technical-feature filters, apply across all discovery modes	false (all defaults)
publishedAfterDate	No	string (date)	Only videos published after this date	"2026-01-01"
finalSortField	No	string (enum)	Sort the complete final dataset by date/views/likes	"viewCount"
proxyConfiguration	No	object	Proxy; auto-escalates on blocks	{"useApifyProxy": true}

{
  "targetUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"],
  "maxChannelVideos": 50,
  "includeChannelAbout": true,
  "fetchTranscripts": true
}

Common pitfall: the technical-feature filters (videoIsHD, videoIs4K, etc.) and search-specific filters (uploadDateFilter, videoLengthFilter) apply meaningfully to keyword-search mode — channel/playlist expansion always returns every matching item from that channel/playlist regardless of these filters, per the schema's own documentation.

🔽 Output sample

Output is typed, normalized JSON with multiple row types (video, channelProfile, communityPost) depending on discovery mode and options (exportable as JSON, CSV, or Excel).

{
  "type": "video",
  "discoveryMode": "channel",
  "isChild": true,
  "title": "How Things Really Work",
  "id": "KrLj6nc516A",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrLj6nc516A",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KrLj6nc516A/hqdefault.jpg",
  "viewCount": 1200000,
  "date": "2026-07-20",
  "likes": 45000,
  "channelName": "MrBeast",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast",
  "channelNumberOfSubscribers": 220000000,
  "channelJoinedDate": "Feb 20, 2012",
  "channelCountry": "US",
  "channelIsVerified": true,
  "duration": "12:34",
  "commentsCount": 3200,
  "text": "Full video description here...",
  "order": 1
}

All 34 fields shown above (across video, channelProfile, and communityPost row types) are the Actor's real dataset columns.

How do you filter and target specific videos?

targetUrls (channel/playlist/direct-video discovery) versus searchQueries (keyword search) is the core category axis. uploadDateFilter/contentTypeFilter/videoLengthFilter and the technical-feature booleans (videoIsHD, videoIs4K, etc.) are the genuine quality/scope thresholds — but note they apply to keyword-search mode; channel/playlist expansion returns every matching item. publishedAfterDate gives an absolute date-scope cutoff. Volume is controlled by maxChannelVideos/maxChannelShorts (channel mode), maxPlaylistVideos (playlist mode), and videosPerQuery/shortsPerQuery/streamsPerQuery (search mode).

{ "targetUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxxxxxxxx"], "maxPlaylistVideos": 0 }

{ "searchQueries": ["fitness workout"], "videosPerQuery": 20, "videoLengthFilter": "long", "uploadDateFilter": "month" }

{ "targetUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"], "includeCommunityPosts": true, "maxCommunityPostsPerChannel": 50 }

▶️ Want to try other YouTube scrapers?

Scraper Name	What it extracts
YouTube Channel Finder: Influencer Category (Nano/Micro/Macro)	Channel discovery with subscriber-tier classification
YouTube Comments Scraper With Commenter Lead Enrichment	Video comments with commenter lead data
YouTube Transcript Scraper & Chapter Extractor	Dedicated transcript and chapter-marker extraction
Instagram Highlights Scraper With Profile Analytics	Comparable full-catalog content extraction for Instagram
Facebook Page Posts Scraper	Comparable full-page content extraction for Facebook
TikTok Trending Videos Scraper	Comparable video-catalog data for TikTok

How to extract YouTube data programmatically

Every run is a standard Apify Actor call — one API request with your token, JSON input, JSON results back.

Python example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN>")

run_input = {
    "targetUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"],
    "maxChannelVideos": 50,
    "includeChannelAbout": True,
}

run = client.actor("<YOUR_USERNAME>/youtube-scraper-channel-playlist-community-data-insights").call(run_input=run_input)

for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(row["title"], row["viewCount"], row.get("channelNumberOfSubscribers"))

Export to spreadsheets or CRM

Export the dataset directly as CSV or Excel, then map title/url to a content-catalog spreadsheet and viewCount/channelNumberOfSubscribers to a performance-benchmarking column.

Is it legal to scrape YouTube channels and playlists?

Channel names, video content, and Community-tab post authors can be personal data for individual creators, so GDPR and CCPA obligations apply to storing and using this data. Public YouTube channels, playlists, and Community posts are visible to any logged-out visitor. Consult legal counsel for commercial applications involving bulk storage of personal data.

❓ FAQ

Does channel expansion get every video, or just a sample?

Every video and Short from the channel's own Videos/Shorts tabs, up to maxChannelVideos/maxChannelShorts — not a search-result sample. Set both caps high (or use their maximum) for a genuinely complete catalog.

How accurate is the channel About-tab data?

It's real data pulled directly from the channel's own About tab (subscriber count, lifetime views, joined date, country, verified status) — not estimated.

Does Community-tab scraping cost extra?

Yes — it's off by default specifically because it costs an extra request per channel, per the schema's own documentation.

Do the technical-feature filters (HD, 4K, HDR, etc.) work on channel/playlist expansion?

They apply meaningfully to keyword-search mode. Channel/playlist expansion returns every matching item from that channel/playlist regardless of these filters, per the input schema's own documentation.

Do I need a YouTube account to use this?

No — the Actor reads YouTube's public channel, playlist, and search pages, requiring no login.

Does YouTube Scraper: Channel, Playlist & Community Data Insights work with Claude, ChatGPT, and AI agent frameworks?

It has no dedicated MCP server registration in this Actor's current setup, but it is callable as a standard Apify API endpoint by any agent framework that can make an authenticated HTTP request and parse JSON.

How does this compare to other YouTube scrapers?

No independently verifiable competitor listing could be confirmed at the time of writing, so no specific comparison is made here. This Actor's distinguishing feature is full channel/playlist expansion with genuine About-tab enrichment and Community-tab scraping, layered onto the classic keyword-search and single-video modes as a full superset.

Can I still do a plain keyword search or single-video scrape?

Yes — searchQueries for keyword search, or a direct video/Shorts URL in targetUrls, both work exactly as in the classic YouTube Scraper this Actor extends.

Conclusion

YouTube Scraper: Channel, Playlist & Community Data Insights turns a channel or playlist URL into its complete real catalog — every video, Short, and optionally Community post, enriched with genuine About-tab data. It's built for content researchers, competitive analysts, and data teams who need the whole picture, not a sample. Start a run with your target channel or playlist URLs to get the full expansion back in one pass.