YouTube Channel Search - Find Channels & Creators by Keyword

YouTube Channel Search

Type a topic, get a list of YouTube channels with subscriber, video and view counts. No channel URLs, no API key, no daily quota.

Pricing at a glance

Channels found	You pay
100	$0.10
1,000	$1.00
10,000	$10.00

$1.00 per 1,000 channels. Platform usage is included, so there is nothing else on the bill. The same channel found under two keywords is saved once and charged once. The Apify free plan's $5 monthly credit covers about 5,000 channels. Set Maximum cost per run and the run stops cleanly when it reaches your limit.

Try it in 3 steps

1. Enter one or more keywords or hashtags, for example home workout or #mealprep.
2. Keep useYoutubeApi on to get subscriber, video and view counts.
3. Click Start. One keyword returns 20–50 channels in about a minute — $0.02 to $0.05.

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

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. Subscriber, video and view counts are added without your own key. You can add your own youtubeApiKey if you prefer to use your quota.

How many channels can I get per keyword? Up to 1,000. YouTube's own search thins out after a few hundred, so several focused keywords work better than one broad one. A single keyword typically returns 20–50 channels.

What exactly am I charged for? One unique channel saved to the dataset = one result. Errors, retries and duplicates are not charged.

Can I find channels that are still active? Yes. Set contentType to video and uploadDate to week to get only channels that uploaded recently.

Can I get contact emails? No. Only public channel data that YouTube exposes.

Can I use it from an AI agent or MCP client? Yes. See the MCP server setup in the API section below.

Questions and problems

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