YouTube Scraper - Videos, Transcripts & Comments in One Run

Scrape YouTube completely, in one run: video details, full transcripts, and comments. Paste a video, channel, playlist or @handle URL, or search by keyword, and get back one clean row per video with everything attached. No login and no API key.

Why this scraper

Most YouTube tools do one job each: one lists a channel's videos, another fetches the transcript of a single video at a time, a third collects comments. Getting a full picture of a channel means running three or four separate tools and joining their outputs yourself.

This actor replaces that stack. Point it at a channel once and every video comes back with its details, its transcript and its top comments already joined in the same row. Transcripts are returned as clean readable text, with no timestamps and no duplicated caption lines, so they are ready for search, summaries and AI pipelines as-is.

What you can do with it

• Turn a whole channel or playlist into a transcript dataset for search, summaries or AI training
• Track a competitor's or creator's views, likes and upload cadence over time
• Pull comments at scale for sentiment and audience research
• Find videos by keyword and export their details and captions

Input

Field	What it does	Example
YouTube URLs	Videos, channels, playlists or @handles to scrape. A channel or playlist returns every video it contains.	https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd, https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
Search terms	Or find videos by keyword instead of pasting URLs.	iphone review, react tutorial
Include transcript	Pull the full spoken transcript (captions) for each video. On by default.	on
Include comments	Also pull top comments per video (author, text, likes, date). Off by default.	off
Preferred transcript language	Prefer this caption language when several exist.	English, Hebrew
Max videos per channel / playlist / search	How many recent videos to take from each source.	50

Output

One row per video:

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Example video title",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "channelName": "Marques Brownlee",
  "channelId": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
  "viewCount": 4192837,
  "likeCount": 210934,
  "durationSeconds": 733,
  "publishedAt": "Jul 8, 2026",
  "category": "Science & Technology",
  "keywords": ["iphone", "review", "tech"],
  "description": "Full video description...",
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "transcript": "In this video we take a look at...",
  "transcriptLanguage": "English",
  "commentsCount": 50,
  "comments": [
    { "text": "Great video!", "author": "@someviewer", "likes": 340, "publishedAt": "1 week ago" }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-10T13:00:00.000Z"
}

How it works

Uses YouTube's own internal interface, the same one the site itself uses, so it reads video details, transcripts and comments reliably where the old public caption feeds now return empty. Transcripts are fetched through a residential connection because YouTube blocks caption downloads from datacenter addresses; this is on by default and can be switched off for a faster, metadata-only run. No API key required.

Limits

• Transcripts come from a video's captions. Videos with captions disabled return an empty transcript, and the rest of the row is still filled.
• Comments are top-level comments, capped by your "max comments per video" setting.
• "Published" is the date label YouTube shows (for recent videos this can be relative, like "2 weeks ago").

Export formats

Results download as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or pull them straight from the Apify API into your own app, spreadsheet or database.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a YouTube API key or a Google account? No. This YouTube scraper needs no API key and no login. It reads YouTube's public data directly, so there are no quota limits like the official YouTube Data API.

Can it download a YouTube transcript or subtitles? Yes. It returns the full transcript (captions) of each video as clean text, in the language you choose when several are available. It works for auto-generated and manual captions.

Can I scrape all videos from a channel or playlist? Yes. Paste a channel, @handle or playlist URL and it returns every video with details, transcript and comments in one run, so you do not need a separate channel scraper, transcript tool and comment scraper.

Can it scrape YouTube comments? Yes. Turn on comments to get top comments per video with author, text, likes and date.

How many videos can I scrape? As many as you want. There is no built-in cap; use the optional limit only if you want to control cost.

Is scraping YouTube legal? This tool collects only public data. You are responsible for how you use it. Review YouTube's terms and your local laws before large-scale use.

Pricing

Pay per video. You only pay for the videos you actually get, whether you run one video or a whole channel.