YouTube Channel Search

Find YouTube channels by keyword, the way you would search for them by hand — then get the subscriber, video and view counts that the search page never shows.

Most YouTube scrapers need a channel URL before they can do anything. This one starts a step earlier: you bring the topic, it brings the channels.

What a row looks like

{
  "channelId": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
  "channelHandle": "@mkbhd",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
  "title": "Marques Brownlee",
  "description": "Quality Tech Videos...",
  "publishedAt": "2008-03-21T00:00:00Z",
  "subscriberCount": 20100000,
  "videoCount": 1784,
  "viewCount": 4692518841,
  "thumbnails": { "high": { "url": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/...", "width": 800 } },
  "source": "video",
  "_searchQuery": "smartphone review",
  "_enriched": true
}

source tells you how the channel was found — it appeared as a channel result, or it was behind a video that matched. _searchQuery keeps the keyword that found it, so a multi-keyword run stays sortable.

Enrichment (subscriberCount, videoCount, viewCount, description, publishedAt) is optional and switched on with useYoutubeApi. No API key of your own is needed.

Input

Field	Meaning
searchQueries	Keywords or hashtags, one per line. Up to 100 per run
contentType	Search channel results directly, or mine video results for the channels behind them
uploadDate	any, hour, today, week, month, year — only videos uploaded in that window count
sortBy	relevance, upload_date, view_count, rating
maxResultsPerQuery	Up to 1000 channels per keyword
useYoutubeApi	Add subscriber, video and view counts to every channel
youtubeApiKey	Optional. Your own YouTube Data API key, if you would rather enrichment ran on your quota

{
  "searchQueries": ["home workout", "#mealprep"],
  "contentType": "channel",
  "uploadDate": "any",
  "sortBy": "relevance",
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 100,
  "useYoutubeApi": true
}

Channels found under different keywords are de-duplicated across the whole run, and one failing keyword does not stop the others. Results are written after each keyword, so a run that stops early still leaves what it found.

What it is good for

• Influencer shortlists — a niche keyword becomes a list of creators with subscriber counts, ready to filter.
• Competitor mapping — see who else publishes on your topic and how big they are.
• Active-creator filters — set contentType: video with uploadDate: week to find channels that are actually still posting.
• Lead lists for outreach — channel handle and URL for every match.

Honest limits

• Search depth is YouTube's, not ours. Results thin out past several hundred per keyword; run more keywords rather than pushing one deeper.
• Enrichment covers what the YouTube Data API exposes. Email addresses and private analytics are not part of it.
• Hashtags behave like keywords, not like YouTube's hashtag pages.

More actors from this author

• YouTube Channel Scraper — one channel to profile, every video and the comments
• YouTube Search Scraper — keyword search to videos with exact views, likes and publish dates
• YouTube Video Scraper — every video on a channel with tags, chapters and captions
• YouTube Comments Scraper — comments and reply threads from any video URL
• Instagram Keyword Scraper — public posts and reels discovered from keywords

Questions and problems

Open an issue on the Issues tab of this actor, with the run ID.