YouTube Channel Scraper Pro 🚀

A high-performance, reliable Apify Actor for scraping YouTube channel videos — including Long-Form and Shorts — with advanced filtering and infinite scroll support.

🔗 Apify Actor URL: https://apify.com/skcho/youtube-channel-scraper-pro

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✨ Key Features

• 🔄 Infinite Scroll (Pagination): Automatically scrolls through the entire channel page using a real browser — no 30-video limit.
• 🗂️ Long-Form & Shorts Separation: Precisely scrape and categorize videos by type.
• 📦 Rich Data Extraction: Titles, View Counts, Upload Dates, Durations, HQ Thumbnails, and Animated WebP Previews — all extracted out of the box.
• 👍 Optional Like Count Extraction: A lightweight, high-concurrency HTTP-based fetcher grabs like counts at ~430 videos/min without launching extra browsers.
• 🎯 Precision Filtering: Filter by minimum views, likes, upload date range, and more.
• 🧠 Hybrid Architecture: PlaywrightCrawler handles real-browser scrolling; HttpCrawler handles likes — minimizing memory usage and maximizing speed.

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⚡ Performance

Scenario	Speed
Channel scroll + data extract (100 videos)	~15 seconds
Like count fetch (per 100 videos, fetchLikes: true)	~15 seconds
Total for 100 videos with likes	~30 seconds

Likes are fetched at ~430 requests/min in parallel via lightweight HTTP requests — no extra browser needed.

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🛠️ Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
channelUrls	Array<String>	(Required)	YouTube channel URLs to scrape (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd). Multiple channels supported.
videoType	Enum	"ALL"	Which video type to scrape: "ALL", "LONG_FORM", or "SHORTS".
minUploadDate	String	""	Only include videos uploaded on or after this date. Format: YYYY-MM-DD.
maxUploadDate	String	""	Only include videos uploaded on or before this date. Format: YYYY-MM-DD.
minViews	Integer	0	Only include videos with at least this many views. (e.g., 1000000 for 1M+).
maxItemsPerChannel	Integer	100	Maximum videos to scrape per channel. HTTP extraction is used first for speed and low cost.
enableDeepScroll	Boolean	false	Enable browser scrolling when HTTP extraction returns fewer videos than requested. Keep disabled for faster, lower-cost runs.
autoResolveChannelUrls	Boolean	true	Resolve display-name style or outdated channel URLs with YouTube channel search before scraping.
fetchLikes	Boolean	false	If enabled, fetches exact Like counts for every video via fast parallel HTTP requests. Adds ~15s per 100 videos.
minLikes	Integer	0	(Requires fetchLikes: true) Only include videos with at least this many likes.

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📄 Output Data Structure

Each video is pushed as a JSON object to the Apify Dataset:

{
  "channelName": "Marques Brownlee",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
  "videoId": "eFeDpUVEy48",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFeDpUVEy48",
  "title": "The Biggest Android Update Ever",
  "type": "LONG_FORM",
  "uploadDateText": "8 days ago",
  "viewCount": 4099999,
  "durationText": "12:59",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eFeDpUVEy48/hqdefault.jpg",
  "animatedThumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/an_webp/eFeDpUVEy48/mqdefault_6s.webp",
  "likeCount": 125000
}

Field Reference

Field	Type	Description
channelName	String	Official channel display name
channelUrl	String	Input channel URL
videoId	String	YouTube video ID
videoUrl	String	Full youtube.com/watch?v=... URL
title	String	Video title
type	String	"LONG_FORM" or "SHORTS"
uploadDateText	String	Relative upload date (e.g., "8 days ago")
viewCount	Integer	Parsed integer view count
durationText	String	Video duration string (e.g., "12:59")
thumbnailUrl	String	Highest-quality static thumbnail URL
animatedThumbnailUrl	String	3-second animated WebP preview URL
likeCount	Integer	Like count — present only when fetchLikes: true

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⚙️ How It Works (Architecture)

This actor uses a two-phase hybrid architecture to maximize both stability and speed:

Phase 1 — HTTP Extract (Default)

The actor first fetches YouTube channel /videos and /shorts tabs with lightweight HTTP requests and parses embedded ytInitialData. This is the default path because it is fast, low-cost, and avoids browser timeouts.

If autoResolveChannelUrls is enabled, display-name style or outdated channel URLs are resolved through YouTube channel search before scraping.

Optional — Deep Scroll (PlaywrightCrawler)

When enableDeepScroll is enabled, a real Chromium browser can navigate to channel tabs and scroll for more loaded items. Keep this disabled unless you specifically need more than the HTTP-loaded batch.

Browser optimizations:

• Blocks unnecessary resources (images, fonts, media) to reduce memory usage
• Disables GPU, extensions, and background services
• Anti-bot fingerprint masking (navigator.webdriver suppressed)

Phase 2 — Like Count Fetch (HttpCrawler, Optional)

If fetchLikes is enabled, up to 20 concurrent lightweight HTTP requests are made to individual youtube.com/watch?v=... pages. Like counts are extracted by parsing the embedded ytInitialData JSON object — no browser required. This runs at ~430 requests/min.

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🤝 Support & Issues

Found a bug or have a feature request? Please reach out via the Apify Issues tab!