YouTube Scraper (Low-Cost)

Scrape the videos, Shorts and live streams of YouTube channels and playlists, with exact publish dates and exact view counts, for $0.30 per 1,000 videos. No YouTube account, no API key, no quota.

What does YouTube Scraper do?

Paste channels, playlists or video links. You get one row per video with its title, link, exact view count, exact publish date, duration, thumbnail and channel (name, id, handle, link and subscriber count).

• 📺 Channels: their Videos, Shorts and Live tabs. Enter a channel as https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd, @mkbhd, or a /channel/, /c/ or /user/ link. A link to one tab, such as https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd/shorts, scrapes that tab.
• 📃 Playlists: every video of a playlist, in the playlist's order.
• 🎬 Single videos: the details of each video link you paste.
• 📅 Date filter: only the videos published after a date, or in the last 7 days, for daily or weekly monitoring.

Why is it cheaper?

• 💰 $0.30 per 1,000 videos, a fraction of what most YouTube scrapers charge.
• 🎯 Exact numbers included. Exact publish dates and exact view counts are in the price, not an extra.
• ⚡ Fast. No browser runs behind it: 616 videos from 6 channels, a playlist and 2 video links took 43 seconds, all with exact dates and views.
• 🧾 You pay for the videos you get. A channel that does not exist or a tab with no videos has no per-item charge. The only other charge is $0.005 per run start (per GB of memory; runs use 1 GB by default).

Who uses it?

• Marketers and agencies: track competitors' uploads, compare views across channels, find the formats that work.
• Creators: benchmark your channel against others in your niche.
• AI and data teams: build video lists to feed transcript, comment or analytics pipelines.
• Researchers: collect publishing histories with exact dates.

How to use it

1. Create a free Apify account.
2. Open the Actor and paste channels, playlists or videos in Channels, playlists or videos.
3. Pick the Channel content you want (Videos, Shorts, Live) and how many Videos per channel tab or playlist.
4. Optionally set Published after to get only recent videos.
5. Click Start, then download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read them through the Apify API.

Input

{
    "urls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
        "@veritasium",
        "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAqhIrjkxbuWI23v9cThsA9GvCAUhRvKZ",
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
    ],
    "contentTypes": ["videos", "shorts"],
    "maxResults": 100,
    "newerThan": "7 days",
    "exactDetails": true
}

Field	Type	Required	Description
urls	Array	Yes	Channel links or handles, playlist links or PL… ids, video links or ids.
contentTypes	Array	No	Which tabs of each channel to scrape: videos, shorts, streams (the Live tab). A channel link that names a tab (…/@mkbhd/shorts) scrapes that tab instead. Default: ["videos"].
maxResults	Integer	No	The most videos to get from each channel tab and each playlist (1 to 5,000). A video link always gives one video. Default: 50.
newerThan	String	No	Only videos published after this date: 2026-01-01, 2026-01-01T12:00:00Z, a time before the run starts (7 days, 24 hours, 2 weeks, 3 months), or a Unix timestamp.
exactDetails	Boolean	No	Exact publish date and exact view count for each video. Turn off for a faster run with dates as YouTube shows them ("3 days ago") and rounded view counts ("1.2M views"). Default: true.

A channel with two content types counts as two channel tabs: @mkbhd with Videos and Shorts gives up to 100 videos and up to 100 Shorts when maxResults is 100. Entries that are not YouTube channels, playlists or videos are skipped and counted in the run's status; the same entry twice is scraped once.

Output

One row per video:

{
    "type": "video",
    "videoId": "scwlR0QHGOk",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scwlR0QHGOk",
    "title": "The NEW Tesla Roadster: My Honest Reaction",
    "viewCount": 11499564,
    "viewCountText": "11M views",
    "durationSeconds": 1365,
    "durationText": "22:45",
    "publishedAt": "2026-10-17T02:09:23.000Z",
    "publishedTimeText": "3 days ago",
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/scwlR0QHGOk/hqdefault.jpg",
    "channelId": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
    "channelName": "Marques Brownlee",
    "channelHandle": "@mkbhd",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
    "subscriberCountText": "21.4M subscribers",
    "input": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd/videos",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-20T23:11:44.718Z"
}

• type is video, short or stream (a live stream, past or live right now). Shorts link to their Shorts page.
• viewCount and publishedAt are exact with Exact dates and view counts on. With it off, viewCount is read from the rounded text and publishedAt is null unless the date filter needed it; viewCountText and publishedTimeText always show YouTube's own wording. A video whose details YouTube does not give keeps the rounded view count and a null publishedAt; under a date filter, it is left out when the date YouTube shows could fall on either side of the filter's date.
• input is the page the video comes from: the channel tab (…/@mkbhd/shorts), the playlist or the video link. Join on it to tell your sources apart.
• subscriberCountText is filled for videos from a channel tab.

The dataset's Overview tab shows the thumbnail, title, type, channel, views, duration and dates of each video.

Each run also saves a RUN_SUMMARY record in its key-value store: how many videos were exported, and for every channel tab, playlist and video whether it was scraped, had no videos, was not found, or could not be scraped.

Pricing

• $0.30 per 1,000 videos ($0.0003 per video)
• $0.005 per run start (per GB of memory; runs use 1 GB by default)

Besides the run start, you pay only for the rows in your dataset. 1,000 videos with exact dates and view counts cost $0.305. Set a spending limit on the run and the scraper stops when it reaches it.

Limits

• Subscriber counts are rounded ("21.4M subscribers"): YouTube shows no exact count without signing in.
• Shorts tiles show no date and no length on YouTube, so publishedTimeText and durationText are empty for Shorts. With exact details on, publishedAt, durationSeconds and viewCount are exact; with them off, publishedAt and durationSeconds are empty (unless the date filter needed the date) and viewCount is read from the rounded text.
• The date filter keeps the videos published after its date, by their exact date when the one YouTube shows ("3 days ago") cannot tell. The Videos and Shorts tabs list videos newest first, so a tab stops at its first older video. The Live tab lists live streams first and past ones only roughly by date, and a playlist keeps its owner's order: both are read to their end or to your limit.
• A video link entered as a watch link is typed video even when it is a Short; paste Shorts as /shorts/ links to get short.
• Members-only videos have no view count: YouTube shows it to members only.
• A channel without the tab you asked for (no Shorts, no live streams) gives no videos for that tab, with no per-item charge.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. There is no quota either.

How many videos can I get from a channel? Up to 5,000 per tab and per run. Raise maxResults and the scraper keeps going through the channel's history.

How do I monitor channels every day? Schedule the Actor daily with Published after set to 2 days (or weekly with 9 days), and de-duplicate on videoId where you keep the rows. The margin covers a run that starts late or a video that YouTube dates near the boundary; a run that restarts keeps the cutoff of its first start. 24 hours, 2 weeks and 3 months work too.

Can I get transcripts? Yes, with YouTube Transcript Scraper (Low-Cost): paste the video links this Actor gives you.

Why is a channel "not found"? The handle or link does not lead to a channel on YouTube. Check it in your browser.

What if a channel cannot be scraped? It is reported in the run's status and RUN_SUMMARY. Run it again later; you pay only for the videos you got, and the run start.

Legal

This Actor collects public information that YouTube shows to anyone without signing in. You are responsible for how you use the data: check that your use is lawful in your country and complies with YouTube's Terms of Service, and handle any personal data according to the laws that apply to you (such as the GDPR). Read Apify's article on whether web scraping is legal.