YouTube Video Details Scraper (bulk, lightweight)

Full metadata for up to 500 YouTube videos in one run: title, description, view count, duration, publish date, category, tags, channel and thumbnail. Paste watch URLs, short links, shorts, embeds or bare video ids. You only pay for videos that are actually delivered.

Why this scraper

• Built on a lightweight route. The same question answered through YouTube's own internal API costs about 10 KB per video here, where the obvious route needs 252 KB. That is where the low price comes from, and why a 500 video run finishes in a minute.
• Only delivered videos are charged. Deleted videos, private videos and temporary blocks come back as clear error records at no cost.
• Metadata survives playback restrictions. A video that will not play in a given country still has a title, a view count and a publish date, and this actor returns them instead of writing the whole row off.
• Agent-ready output. One flat row per video with a stable schema and explicit error codes, so it drops straight into a pipeline or an LLM tool.
• Every input format works. dQw4w9WgXcQ, a watch URL with timestamps, youtu.be/..., /shorts/..., /embed/... or /live/....

Who this is for

Content and competitor researchers who need the numbers behind a list of videos, teams enriching their own video catalogue, and anyone feeding video metadata into an AI pipeline. It pairs naturally with the channel and transcript scrapers from the same publisher: list a channel's videos, pull their details, then fetch the transcripts.

Who this is not for

If you need one video's view count once, the YouTube page is faster and free. This actor earns its place from roughly the tenth video onwards, and from the moment you need the data in a table instead of on a screen.

It returns public video and channel metadata only. No comments, no commenter names, no personal data.

Input fields

Field	Type	Required or default	What it does
videos	list of text	required	Video URLs or ids, up to 500 per run. Watch URLs, youtu.be links, shorts, embeds and bare 11-character ids all work.
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, e.g. US, NL, DE. Some videos are region restricted.

Input example

{
    "videos": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
        "https://youtu.be/JGwWNGJdvx8",
        "Od6M0AXpcxQ"
    ],
    "language": "en",
    "country": "US"
}

Output example

Field	Type	What it holds	Example
videoId	text	The eleven-character YouTube id of the video, the key to join other data on.	JGwWNGJdvx8
url	text	The watch page of the video.	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGwWNGJdvx8
title	text	The title as the uploader set it.	Ed Sheeran - Shape of You (Official Music Video)
description	text	The full description text under the video.	Brand new album 'Play' out now: https://es.lnk.to/play Th...
channelId	text	The channel id (UC...), stable where the channel name can change.	UC0C-w0YjGpqDXGB8IHb662A
channelName	text	The channel that published the video.	Ed Sheeran
channelUrl	text	The channel page on YouTube.	https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0C-w0YjGpqDXGB8IHb662A
viewCount	number	Views as YouTube reports them at the moment of the run.	6815253555
durationSeconds	number	The length of the video in seconds.	263
publishDate	text	The date YouTube shows as the publication date.	2017-01-30T02:57:50-08:00
uploadDate	text	The date the file was uploaded, which can be earlier than the publication date.	2017-01-30T02:57:50-08:00
category	text	YouTube's category for the video, for example Music or Science & Technology.	Music
tags	list	The uploader's tags; most videos have none or only a few.	["Ed Sheeran", "Shape Of You"]
isLiveContent	true/false	True when the video is or was a live stream.	False
isFamilySafe	true/false	True when YouTube marks the video as suitable for all audiences.	True
thumbnailUrl	text	The largest thumbnail YouTube offers for the video.	https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JGwWNGJdvx8/sddefault.jpg

{
    "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
    "description": "The official video for ...",
    "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
    "channelName": "Rick Astley",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
    "viewCount": 1814441286,
    "durationSeconds": 213,
    "publishDate": "2009-10-24T00:00:00-07:00",
    "uploadDate": "2009-10-25T00:00:00-07:00",
    "category": "Music",
    "tags": ["rick astley", "never gonna give you up"],
    "isLiveContent": false,
    "isFamilySafe": true,
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "status": "ok"
}

A video that cannot be delivered produces an error record instead, and is not charged:

{
    "input": "aaaaaaaaaaa",
    "status": "error",
    "errorCode": "VIDEO_UNAVAILABLE",
    "error": "Video aaaaaaaaaaa is unavailable (ERROR)"
}

Error codes: INVALID_VIDEO_ID, VIDEO_UNAVAILABLE, BLOCKED. INPUT_TRUNCATED appears once when your input is longer than this actor accepts.

Related actors from steadydata

• youtube-thumbnail-extractor: every thumbnail size of the same videos
• youtube-transcript-bulk: the spoken text of the same videos
• youtube-comments: the comments, without author names
• youtube-channel-videos: every video of a channel, as input for this actor
• Used together with youtube-channel-videos and youtube-transcript-bulk in a recipe: YouTube metadata in bulk without the API quota.

Pricing

Pay per event: one video-fetched event per delivered video. No charge for videos that fail, no charge for deleted or private videos, 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

Does it work for Shorts and live streams? Yes. Shorts are ordinary videos with a different URL, and past live streams return their metadata like any other video. isLiveContent tells you which is which.

Why are there two dates? publishDate is when the video went public and uploadDate is when it was uploaded. For most videos they match; for premieres and re-published videos they do not.

Do I get the full description? Yes, the complete description text as YouTube stores it, not a truncated preview.

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

What happens when YouTube changes something? Internal routes shift from time to time; that is the nature of this work. The difference here is the response: the actor is monitored daily and fixed fast, and while it is broken you are not charged, because only delivered videos cost anything.