YouTube Search Results Scraper (bulk keywords, lightweight)

Run up to 200 keywords through YouTube search in one go and get ranked results back as a table: rank, title, video id, duration, view count, publish date and thumbnail. Sort by relevance, upload date, view count or rating. You only pay for results that are actually delivered.

Why this scraper

• Built for keyword lists, not single searches. Paste 200 keywords, get one flat table with the query and the rank on every row, ready to pivot.
• Built on a lightweight route. This actor asks YouTube's own internal API instead of loading the results page, and needs roughly 3 KB per result.
• Only delivered results are charged. A keyword without results comes back as a clear error record at no cost.
• A hard cost ceiling you control. maxResultsPerQuery is the cap: one delivered result is one charged event.
• Rank is preserved. Position 1 stays position 1, which is the whole point when you are tracking visibility for a keyword.

Who this is for

Anyone tracking what ranks on YouTube for a set of keywords: content and SEO teams checking visibility, researchers sampling a topic, and pipelines that need candidate videos before pulling details or transcripts.

Who this is not for

If you want to search YouTube once, the website is faster and free. This actor earns its place from the tenth keyword onwards, and from the moment you want the results in a spreadsheet instead of on a screen.

It returns public video metadata only. No channel subscriber lists, no comments, no personal data.

Input fields

Field	Type	Required or default	What it does
queries	list of text	required	Keywords to search YouTube for, up to 200 per run.
maxResultsPerQuery	number	50	Stop after this many results per query. This is your cost ceiling: one delivered result is one charged event.
sortBy	text (relevance, upload_date, view_count, rating)	relevance	How YouTube should order the results.
language	text	en	Interface language for the texts YouTube returns, e.g. en, nl, de.
country	text	US	ISO country code used for the request. Search results differ per country.

Input example

{
    "queries": [
        "web scraping tutorial",
        "n8n automation",
        "apify actor"
    ],
    "maxResultsPerQuery": 50,
    "sortBy": "relevance",
    "language": "en",
    "country": "US"
}

Output example

Field	Type	What it holds	Example
query	text	The search term this row was found with.	web scraping tutorial
sortBy	text	The ranking that was asked for: relevance, date, views or rating.	relevance
rank	number	The place of the video in the search results, counting from 1.	1
videoId	text	The eleven-character YouTube id of the video, the key to join other data on.	hHQlcnubuFI
url	text	The watch page of the video.	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHQlcnubuFI
title	text	The title as the uploader set it.	Learn Web Scraping in 5 Minutes (NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE)
duration	text	The length as YouTube prints it on the thumbnail, for example 12:04.	4:53
durationSeconds	number	The length of the video in seconds.	293
viewCount	number	Views as YouTube reports them at the moment of the run.	168946
publishedText	text	How long ago YouTube says it appeared, for example "3 weeks ago"; YouTube gives no exact date here.	6 months ago
thumbnailUrl	text	The largest thumbnail YouTube offers for the video.	https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hHQlcnubuFI/sddefault.jpg

{
    "query": "web scraping tutorial",
    "sortBy": "relevance",
    "rank": 1,
    "videoId": "Od6M0AXpcxQ",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od6M0AXpcxQ",
    "title": "Learn Web Scraping in 5 Minutes",
    "duration": "5:12",
    "durationSeconds": 312,
    "viewCount": 157767,
    "publishedText": "6 months ago",
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Od6M0AXpcxQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "status": "ok"
}

A keyword that returns nothing produces an error record instead, and is not charged:

{
    "input": "qzxwvutsrponmlkjihgfedcba",
    "status": "error",
    "errorCode": "NO_RESULTS",
    "error": "No videos found for query 'qzxwvutsrponmlkjihgfedcba'"
}

Error codes: INVALID_QUERY, INVALID_SORT, NO_RESULTS, BLOCKED. INPUT_TRUNCATED appears once when your input is longer than this actor accepts.

Related actors from steadydata

• youtube-video-details: full metadata for the results
• youtube-channel-search: the same idea, but for channels

Pricing

Pay per event: one result-listed event per delivered result. No charge for keywords that fail or return nothing, no separate platform-usage surcharge.

Free Apify plan: this actor delivers up to 25 rows per run for accounts on the Apify free plan, and then stops with a message. That limit is set by us, not by Apify. It exists so the actor keeps paying for itself for the people who do pay. Any paid Apify plan runs it at full size, billed per delivered row, with failed rows never charged.

Reviews: if this actor saves you time, a short review on this page is the one thing that helps most. Ratings are what other buyers look at first, and we have no other way to ask.

FAQ

Do results differ per country? Yes, and that is deliberate. Set country to the market you care about; YouTube ranks differently per region, so a Dutch ranking check needs NL.

Which sort orders are supported? Relevance (the default), upload date, view count and rating.

Are results stable enough to track over time? Search rankings move by the hour, so treat a run as a snapshot with a timestamp, not as a fixed truth. Running the same keyword list daily is the useful pattern.

Why do I get fewer results than I asked for? YouTube stops offering more at some point, which differs per keyword. You are only charged for what was actually delivered.

Is personal data collected? No. Public video metadata only.

What happens when YouTube changes something? Internal routes shift from time to time. The actor is monitored daily and fixed fast, and while it is broken you are not charged, because only delivered results cost anything.