YouTube Search API: Rankings, Views & Transcripts

Search YouTube by keyword and get the results in the order YouTube ranks them: videos, Shorts, views, channel, publish date and duration. Add full video stats (likes, comment count, channel subscribers, tags, category, full description) and transcripts with one switch. You can also look up a list of video URLs directly.

No YouTube login, no browser, no proxies to configure. The data comes from a licensed SERP data API instead of scraping YouTube pages, so runs don't break when YouTube changes its HTML and don't fail on 403s or rate limits.

What you can do with it

• Keyword research for YouTube: see who ranks for a query, their view counts, and how old the top videos are.
• Track your channel's rank: add your channel to Track my channels and schedule a daily run. The run summary shows your best position for every query.
• Competitor and influencer research: get views, likes, comments and subscriber counts for any list of videos.
• Transcripts for AI and content work: pull captions (optionally translated) for search results or for your own list of videos.
• Shorts vs long-form: every row has isShort, and you can turn Shorts off.

Input

Field	What it does
Search queries	Keywords, one per line
Max results per query	1-700 ranked results per query (default 20)
Country / Language	Where and in which language to search (default US / en)
Include Shorts	Keep Shorts in results (default on)
Include channel and playlist results	Also return channel and playlist cards
Video URLs or IDs	Look up specific videos (watch, youtu.be, Shorts or IDs)
Add full video stats	Likes, comments, subscribers, tags, category, description for search results
Add transcripts	Captions text; optionally timestamped segments and translation
Track my channels	Channel URLs, @handles or IDs to flag and rank-check

Example:

{
  "searchQueries": ["python tutorial", "home espresso machine review"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 20,
  "country": "US",
  "addVideoDetails": true,
  "trackChannels": ["@yourchannel"]
}

Output

One dataset row per search result or per video. Search rows look like this:

{
  "type": "search",
  "query": "python tutorial",
  "position": 1,
  "resultType": "video",
  "videoId": "abc123def45",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123def45",
  "title": "Python Tutorial for Beginners",
  "channelName": "Example Channel",
  "channelHandle": "@example",
  "viewCount": 1250000,
  "publishedAt": "2025-03-14T10:00:00+00:00",
  "durationSec": 3720,
  "isShort": false,
  "likeCount": 31000,
  "commentCount": 1200,
  "channelSubscriberCount": 850000,
  "status": "ok"
}

The dataset has three views: Search results, Video stats and Transcripts. The OUTPUT record holds a run summary with totals, the events charged and the tracked channels' positions per query.

Pricing

Pay per result. No monthly fee and no proxy costs.

Event	Price	Paid plans (Bronze / Silver / Gold)
Run start (once per run, only when results are delivered)	$0.02	$0.02
Search result	$0.0015 ($1.50 per 1,000)	$0.00135 / $0.0012 / $0.001125
Full video stats (per video)	$0.006	$0.0054 / $0.0048 / $0.0045
Transcript (per video with captions)	$0.0065	$0.00585 / $0.0052 / $0.004875

Example runs at list price:

Run	Cost
1 query, top 20 results	$0.05
Daily rank check: 5 queries x 50 results	$0.40 per day
10 queries x 100 results	$1.52
2 queries x 20 results + full stats + transcripts	about $0.55
100 video URLs with full stats	$0.62

You are not charged for:

• queries with no results, videos that don't exist or are private, and videos without captions;
• invalid inputs and errors;
• results skipped because your max charge per run was reached.

Set Maximum cost per run in the run options to cap your spend; the Actor plans the run to fit and reports anything skipped.

Run time and cost examples

Costs use the current list prices on the Apify Free plan, including Apify's $0.00005 start event. Run times are from our own test runs in October 2026 at the default memory; yours depend on the input.

Run	Run time (our tests)	Cost (Free plan)
1 query, top 20 results	not measured yet	about $0.05
5 queries x 50 results (daily rank check)	not measured yet	about $0.40
100 video URLs with full stats	not measured yet	about $0.62

Search result: $0.0015 on the Apify Free plan, $0.00135 on Starter (Bronze), $0.0012 on Scale (Silver), $0.001125 on Business (Gold) and above. The discount is applied automatically. Full video stats: $0.006 / $0.0054 / $0.0048 / $0.0045. Transcript: $0.0065 / $0.00585 / $0.0052 / $0.004875.

Notes and limits

• Results reflect what YouTube shows a signed-out viewer in the chosen country. Personalized results are not available.
• Data is public video and channel metadata only. No comments text, no personal data, no account access.
• Results are fetched through a queue and usually arrive within 10-30 seconds per batch, so a run of a few hundred queries still finishes in minutes.
• View counts in search results can be rounded by YouTube; turn on full video stats for exact counts.
• Transcripts are YouTube's captions (manual or auto-generated). Very long transcripts are truncated at 1,000,000 characters.

Use it from an AI agent (Apify MCP)

Give Claude, Cursor, VS Code or any other MCP client this Actor as a tool through the Apify MCP server. Add this to your client's MCP config; you sign in to Apify with OAuth on first connect:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=steady-scrape/youtube-search-video-stats"
    }
  }
}

Clients without OAuth can send an Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN> header instead. Then ask, for example: "Search YouTube for 'n8n tutorial', return the top 20 videos with views and publish dates, and get the transcript of the top one." The agent starts a normal run, so the prices above and your maximum charge per run still apply.

FAQ

How do I track where my video ranks on YouTube for a keyword? Run your keywords on a daily schedule. Each result has its rank position, so you can chart where your video sits over time.

Can I get YouTube transcripts in bulk? Yes. Add video URLs (or search results) with transcripts on. You pay $0.0065 per video that has captions; videos without captions are free.

Do I need a YouTube API key or quota? No. There's no API key, login, browser or proxy to manage.

How much does a YouTube search cost? One query with the top 20 results costs about $0.05, including the $0.02 run start.

Support

Open an issue on the Issues tab with your run ID and we'll take a look, usually within a day.

Acceptable use

You may not use results from this service to build or operate a search engine, or any product or service that competes with or harms the business of search engine providers.

— SteadyScrape