YouTube Comments Scraper – Comments, Replies & Likes

Scrape YouTube comments and replies without an API key or quota. Give it video or Shorts URLs, a channel (comments from its latest videos), a playlist, or a search term (comments from the top videos for a keyword). Every comment comes with the full text, author name and channel, like count, reply count, pinned / hearted / by-the-creator flags and a date.

You pay only for comments. Opening the videos to reach them is free, and the run stops cleanly at your maximum cost.

What you can use it for

• Sentiment and product feedback: pull the top or newest comments on product reviews, then score them with an LLM.
• Brand monitoring: search your brand name and collect what viewers say under the top videos, or schedule a run on a competitor's channel for comments on its new uploads.
• Audience research: find the questions viewers keep asking, which creators reply, and which comments the creator pins or hearts.
• Lead and community discovery: every comment links to its author's channel.
• Datasets for AI: clean plain-text comments, one record each, ready for RAG, classification or fine-tuning.

Ready-made examples you can run in one click: YouTube comments about a product or brand · Comments on a channel's new YouTube videos.

How to use it

1. Add videos, channels or keywords. Paste video URLs or @handles, or type a keyword to read the top videos for it. Pick how many comments per video and whether you want replies.

2. Click Start. Opening the videos is free; you only pay for the comments saved.

3. Get clean data. Every comment comes with text, author, likes, reply count and the video it belongs to. Export it as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it through the API.

How to scrape YouTube comments

1. Create a free Apify account and open this Actor.
2. Add Video, channel or playlist URLs, one per line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…, Shorts URLs, video IDs, @mkbhd, /channel/UC… or playlist URLs. Over the API, ["@mkbhd"] and [{"url": "https://…"}] both work.
3. Optional: add Search terms to get comments from the top videos for a keyword.
4. Set Max comments per video, Comment order (top or newest first) and Max replies per comment.
5. For channels, playlists and searches, set Videos per channel / playlist / search (how many of the latest or top videos to read) and, if you like, Only videos published after (7 days, 2025-01-31).
6. Click Start, then download the comments as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read them through the Apify API.
7. Use Schedule to run it daily: a channel URL with Only videos published after = 1 day gives you the comments on each new upload.

Tips

• Replies are saved right after their parent comment, with isReply: true and parentId.
• sourceInput tells you which URL or search term each comment came from, so one run can cover many brands or channels.
• Videos with comments turned off are skipped and cost nothing.

Output

{
  "type": "comment",
  "id": "UgzKYksqeQ5gA3t0g0F4AaABAg",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoTitle": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "videoChannelName": "Rick Astley",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&lc=UgzKYksqeQ5gA3t0g0F4AaABAg",
  "text": "I Rick rolled my entire French class because…",
  "authorName": "@grustache4569",
  "authorChannelId": "UCKrzgYonJnMd0Dk7zQXjYXw",
  "authorChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@grustache4569",
  "authorAvatarUrl": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/…",
  "authorIsVerified": false,
  "authorIsChannelOwner": false,
  "likeCount": 106000,
  "replyCount": 665,
  "publishedTimeText": "6 years ago",
  "publishedAtApprox": "2020-11-04T03:16:17Z",
  "isEdited": true,
  "isPinned": false,
  "isHearted": false,
  "isReply": false,
  "parentId": null,
  "sourceInput": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-06T07:05:01Z"
}

Field	Notes
likeCount, replyCount	Rounded the way YouTube shows them ("106K" → 106000)
publishedAtApprox	YouTube only shows "6 years ago", so this is an estimate (exact to the hour for recent comments). publishedTimeText is the original text
authorIsChannelOwner	The comment was written by the video's creator
isPinned, isHearted	Pinned by the creator / hearted by the creator
isReply, parentId	Replies point to their parent comment
sourceInput	The URL or search term you gave that led to this comment

Input example

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "@mkbhd"
  ],
  "searchQueries": ["iphone 17 review"],
  "maxComments": 200,
  "commentsSortBy": "newest",
  "maxRepliesPerComment": 5,
  "maxResults": 3,
  "publishedAfter": "30 days"
}

Pricing

Pay per comment. No monthly fee, and Apify's free plan credit covers your first runs. The price drops on bigger Apify plans:

Your Apify plan	Per comment or reply	Per 1,000
Free	$0.0012	$1.20
Starter	$0.001	$1.00
Scale	$0.0008	$0.80
Business	$0.0006	$0.60
Run start	$0.00005	–

Example on the Starter plan: 200 comments from each of 10 videos cost $2.00. Opening videos, channels and search pages is free, and videos with comments turned off cost nothing.

Use with AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, MCP)

Add the Actor as a tool through the Apify MCP server: https://mcp.apify.com?actors=smoldesk/youtube-comments-scraper. Then paste this into your agent's system prompt or tool notes:

Tool: smoldesk/youtube-comments-scraper (YouTube Comments Scraper, Apify)
Use it when: the user wants the comments or replies on YouTube videos or Shorts, comments on a channel's latest videos, or what viewers say about a keyword or brand. No API key or login needed.
Don't use it when: the user wants video stats or channel profiles (use smoldesk/youtube-scraper or smoldesk/youtube-channel-scraper), transcripts, or live chat.
How to call: run the Actor with JSON input and read the dataset items. Each comment costs money, so keep maxComments small unless the user asks for more.
Example input: {"startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"], "maxComments": 100, "commentsSortBy": "top"}

Questions an agent can answer with it:

• What do viewers complain about under the top reviews of this product?
• Summarize the newest comments on this channel's last three videos.
• Which questions come up most often under this video?

Use with AI (LangChain / LlamaIndex / CrewAI)

With LangChain (pip install langchain-apify):

from langchain_apify import ApifyWrapper
from langchain_core.documents import Document

apify = ApifyWrapper()  # reads APIFY_API_TOKEN
loader = apify.call_actor(
    actor_id="smoldesk/youtube-comments-scraper",
    run_input={"searchQueries": ["standing desk review"], "maxResults": 5, "maxComments": 100},
    dataset_mapping_function=lambda c: Document(
        page_content=c["text"],
        metadata={k: c.get(k) for k in ("url", "videoTitle", "authorName", "likeCount", "isReply")},
    ),
)
docs = loader.load()

LlamaIndex: ApifyActor from llama-index-readers-apify. CrewAI: use the Apify MCP server above.

Limitations

• Comment dates are approximate: YouTube only shows "3 weeks ago" on public pages.
• Like and reply counts are rounded the way YouTube displays them.
• No live chat and no comments on videos where the creator turned comments off.
• Age-restricted and members-only videos show what a logged-out visitor sees.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. There is no daily quota and no Google Cloud project.

How many comments can I get per video? As many as YouTube shows a logged-out visitor, which for most videos is all of them. Set Max comments per video to what you need.

Do I pay for the videos it opens? No. Only saved comments and replies are charged.

Do I need a login, cookies or proxies? No. Residential proxies are never needed or used.

Is it legal to scrape YouTube comments? It reads public data that any logged-out visitor can see. Comments are personal data under GDPR and similar laws, so check your local rules for your use case. This Actor is not affiliated with YouTube or Google.

Feedback

Found a bug or missing a field? Open an issue in the Issues tab. If the Actor saved you time, a short review on this page helps other people find it.

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