YouTube Scraper: Videos, Channels, Search & Shorts ($1 per 1,000)

Scrape YouTube video data in bulk from YouTube searches, channels (videos, Shorts or live streams), playlists and video URLs. Every video comes back as one clean row: title, views, likes, publish date, duration, channel, category, tags, hashtags, description and thumbnail.

$1 per 1,000 videos, platform and proxy costs included. Unavailable videos are never charged. No login or API key needed.

What can it do?

• 🔎 YouTube search to data: search any keyword and get the top results, with filters by upload date (last hour, today, this week, this month, this year) and sort by popularity.
• 📺 Whole channels: @mkbhd or any channel URL; the newest uploads first. Choose the Videos, Shorts or Live tab.
• 📃 Playlists: every video in playlist order.
• 🎬 Video URLs: details for specific videos, Shorts, youtu.be links and live replays.
• 👍 Likes and exact dates: like count and ISO publish date for every video, not just "3 weeks ago".
• 📊 Ranking position: the position field keeps each video's rank in its search, channel or playlist, ready for SEO and trend tracking.
• 🛡️ Reliable and fast: uses cheap datacenter proxies and automatically switches to residential proxies when YouTube shows its bot check. 1,000 videos take about 2 minutes.

Use cases

• Market and competitor research: see what performs in your niche, which channels post most, and what their videos get in views and likes.
• Influencer discovery: find creators by topic, then compare their recent videos' engagement.
• SEO and content ideas: track which titles, tags and hashtags rank for a keyword over time.
• Trend monitoring: schedule a daily search with "Today" or "This week" to catch new videos on a topic.
• Datasets for AI and analytics: build clean video datasets for dashboards, LLM pipelines or academic research.

How to use it

1. Click Try for free.
2. Add YouTube searches, channels, playlists or video URLs (any mix).
3. Optional: set the search filters and the channel tab.
4. Click Start, then download your data as JSON, CSV or Excel, or use it through the API, Make, Zapier or n8n.

Input examples

The 100 most popular videos uploaded this month about a topic:

{
    "searchQueries": ["ai agents"],
    "searchSort": "popularity",
    "uploadDate": "month",
    "maxVideosPerSource": 100
}

The 50 latest Shorts from two channels:

{
    "channels": ["@mkbhd", "https://www.youtube.com/@TED"],
    "channelTab": "shorts",
    "maxVideosPerSource": 50
}

Output example

One row per video (description shortened):

{
    "videoId": "arj7oStGLkU",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU",
    "title": "Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator | Tim Urban | TED",
    "channelName": "TED",
    "channelId": "UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug",
    "channelHandle": "@TED",
    "publishedAt": "2016-04-06T09:59:35-07:00",
    "uploadedAt": "2016-04-06T09:59:35-07:00",
    "durationSeconds": 844,
    "duration": "14:04",
    "viewCount": 62138830,
    "likeCount": 2055247,
    "category": "People & Blogs",
    "keywords": ["TED Talk", "Tim Urban", "procrastination", "productivity"],
    "hashtags": [],
    "description": "Tim Urban knows that procrastination doesn't make sense, …",
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/arj7oStGLkU/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "isShort": false,
    "isLiveContent": false,
    "isLiveNow": false,
    "isUnlisted": false,
    "isFamilySafe": true,
    "ratingsAllowed": true,
    "source": "search: procrastination",
    "position": 1,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-29T12:10:00.000Z"
}

The Output tab describes every field. Videos and inputs that produced no data (private or deleted videos, invalid links, channels not found) are listed with the reason in the FAILED_VIDEOS record of the run's key-value store.

How much does it cost?

$1.00 per 1,000 videos, plus a tiny start fee per run. Platform usage and proxies are included.

Videos	Price
100	$0.10
1,000	$1.00
10,000	$10.00

Unavailable videos are never charged. You can set a maximum cost per run; the scraper stops when it's reached and never charges more. The Apify Free plan's monthly credit covers thousands of videos.

Tips

• Fresh content: combine a search with Upload date: Today and schedule the run daily.
• Most viewed: set Search: sort by to Popularity.
• Big jobs: raise Maximum videos in total (up to 10,000 per run) and Videos per search, channel or playlist (up to 5,000).
• Need transcripts too? Use our YouTube Transcript Scraper on the same videos.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key or account? No. The scraper reads public video pages the way the YouTube app does.

Why is likeCount empty for some videos? The creator hid the like count. Everything else is still returned.

How many results does a search return? Up to 5,000 per search, following YouTube's own order. YouTube usually stops offering new results after several hundred to a few thousand videos per query; use more specific searches or upload-date filters to go further.

Is it legal? It collects publicly available video information, with no login and no data about viewers. Respect copyright and YouTube's terms when you reuse the data. If in doubt, consult a lawyer. Read more about the legality of web scraping.

Do I need to configure proxies? No. The default setting handles YouTube's bot checks automatically.

Limitations

• Private, deleted and members-only videos can't be scraped (they're listed in FAILED_VIDEOS and not charged).
• Upload-date filters and popularity sort apply to searches; channels are always newest first.
• Comment counts and subscriber counts are not included.

Support

Found a bug or need a feature? Open an issue in the Issues tab with your run ID.