YouTube Comments Scraper: every comment and reply, ready for sentiment analysis

Paste a list of YouTube videos and get all the comments and replies under them as clean, flat rows: the text, the author and their channel, likes, reply count, when it was posted, and whether the creator pinned it, hearted it or wrote it. One row per comment, replies linked to their parent, so it loads straight into a spreadsheet, a BI tool or a sentiment model.

You choose the order YouTube itself offers (top comments or newest first) and how many rows you want per video. Videos with comments turned off, private or deleted videos, age-restricted and members-only videos are reported in the run status with the reason and are never charged.

One flat price per comment delivered, platform usage included. No API key, no Google Cloud project, no login, no cookies.

What it costs against the rest of the category

	This actor	Most-used YouTube comments actor on Apify	YouTube Data API
Price	$0.50 per 1,000 comments, all-in	$2 per 1,000	Free, but 10,000 quota units a day and a Google Cloud project
Replies	Every reply, paged to the end of the thread	Varies	Only the first 5 per thread without extra calls
Pinned / creator heart / creator reply flags	Yes	Usually not	Partly
Videos with comments off	Free, with the reason	Varies	Error
Setup	Paste links	Paste links	API key, quota management

What you get

One record per comment or reply:

Field	Description
videoId, videoUrl, videoTitle	The video the comment is under
commentId	YouTube's comment ID (a reply's ID is parentId.replyId)
commentUrl	Direct link that opens the video with this comment highlighted
parentCommentId	For a reply, the comment it answers; null for a top-level comment
isReply	True for replies
text	The full comment text, line breaks and emojis kept
authorName	The author's @handle as YouTube shows it
authorChannelId, authorChannelUrl	The author's channel
authorAvatarUrl	Profile picture
isVerifiedAuthor	The author has YouTube's verified badge
isChannelOwner	Written by the video's own creator
isPinned	Pinned by the creator
isHearted	Got the creator's heart
likeCountApprox	Likes as a number. YouTube rounds above 1,000 ("13K" becomes 13000), so it is exact below 1,000 and approximate above
likeCountText	Likes exactly as YouTube displays them
replyCount	Replies under a top-level comment (null on replies)
publishedTimeText	YouTube's own wording, e.g. 3 weeks ago
publishedAtApprox	An ISO date estimated from that wording and the capture time. "2 years ago" can be off by months, so treat it as an estimate
isEdited	The author edited the comment
capturedAt	When the run collected the row

The run's status line also gives each video's total comment count as YouTube shows it ("9,396 Comments"), how many rows you got and why it stopped.

Example row (real, from a test run)

{
  "videoId": "aircAruvnKk",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk",
  "videoTitle": "But what is a neural network? | Deep learning chapter 1",
  "commentUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk&lc=Ugwedfi--9yZVC0eefl4AaABAg",
  "commentId": "Ugwedfi--9yZVC0eefl4AaABAg",
  "parentCommentId": null,
  "isReply": false,
  "text": "I study mathematics, physics and architecture. By definition this man is an ORACLE in the strict meaning of the word. ...",
  "authorName": "@kummer45",
  "authorChannelId": "UCqArZkt3NAOU0tcgIi6xmFQ",
  "authorChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@kummer45",
  "authorAvatarUrl": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AIdro_m4CSuafW-y2xf_8OTq-udiBcDuBIkYQ6mivro3bwU=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
  "isVerifiedAuthor": false,
  "isChannelOwner": false,
  "isPinned": false,
  "isHearted": false,
  "likeCountApprox": 13000,
  "likeCountText": "13K",
  "replyCount": 173,
  "publishedTimeText": "7 years ago",
  "publishedAtApprox": "2019-10-16T03:49:43Z",
  "isEdited": true,
  "capturedAt": "2026-10-15T21:49:42.843Z"
}

Who uses this

• Brands and agencies doing social listening. Pull every comment under your launch video, a competitor's ad or an influencer's review and score the sentiment, spot the recurring complaint, find the questions people keep asking.
• Researchers. Build a comment corpus for a topic, a channel or a news event, with stable IDs and parent links so threads can be rebuilt.
• Creators and community managers. Export your own comments to find the ones you have not answered, collect video ideas and testimonials, and see which comments you pinned or hearted.
• AI pipelines. Flat JSON with one comment per row goes straight into an embedding job, a classifier or an LLM prompt. Turn off replies when you only want the top-level discussion.

Input

Field	What it does
videoUrls	The videos, up to 500 per run. Watch links, youtu.be links, Shorts links, /live/ links and bare 11-character IDs, mixed freely. Duplicates are removed. Another scraper's dataset with a url or videoId key works as-is
maxCommentsPerVideo	Rows per video, 1 to 10,000 (default 200). Replies count, so a video with 100 comments and 300 replies is 400 rows
includeReplies	On by default. Off gives top-level comments only
sortBy	top (YouTube's "Top comments", the default) or newest ("Newest first")

Rows come page by page: 20 top-level comments, then the replies to those 20, then the next 20. With a small limit, one very busy thread can therefore take most of it; raise the limit or turn replies off if you want breadth.

One video, top comments with replies

{
  "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"],
  "maxCommentsPerVideo": 500,
  "includeReplies": true
}

Fresh reactions on several videos, comments only

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk",
    "https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dQw4w9WgXcQ"
  ],
  "maxCommentsPerVideo": 200,
  "includeReplies": false,
  "sortBy": "newest"
}

Pricing

Event	Price
Comment (or reply) delivered	$0.0005 each, i.e. $0.50 per 1,000
Run start	$0.001 per run

Store discounts apply: Bronze $0.45, Silver $0.40, Gold $0.35 per 1,000 comments.

• Misses are free. Videos with comments turned off, unavailable, private, age-restricted or members-only videos, and videos with no comments yet cost nothing beyond the run start. The status line says which and why.
• Platform usage is included. There is no proxy setting to pay for or configure.
• You control the spend with maxCommentsPerVideo, and the run also respects the maximum charge you set on the run.

Limits and honest caveats

• Only what a signed-out visitor sees. This actor never logs in. Age-restricted and members-only videos show no comments without an account, so they are reported and skipped. Comments YouTube holds for review or hides are not visible either, which is why a video's total can be a little higher than what you can collect.
• Live chat is not comments. A live stream's chat (and chat replay) is a different feed and is not included. If the stream also has a normal comment section, you get those comments.
• Likes above 1,000 are rounded by YouTube ("13K"). likeCountApprox is the number, likeCountText is what YouTube showed.
• Dates are relative on YouTube ("2 years ago"). publishedAtApprox turns that into a date, but it is only as precise as the wording.
• Replies to replies are shown by YouTube as replies to the same top-level comment, usually starting with an @mention. That is how they come out here too.

Frequently asked questions

How do I download all comments from a YouTube video? Paste the link, set maxCommentsPerVideo at or above the video's comment count (up to 10,000) and run. Replies are included by default.

Can I scrape YouTube comments without an API key? Yes. There is no key, no quota and no Google Cloud project. The official Data API caps you at 10,000 quota units a day and returns only a handful of replies per thread without extra calls.

Does it get replies to comments? Yes, every reply in the thread, paged to the end, each as its own row with parentCommentId pointing at the comment it belongs to.

Can I get the newest comments first? Set sortBy to newest. That is YouTube's own "Newest first" order, handy for monitoring a video after it goes live.

Does it work on YouTube Shorts? Yes, paste the Shorts link. Shorts comments come out the same way.

Can I export YouTube comments to Excel or CSV for sentiment analysis? Yes. Every row is flat, so the dataset exports to CSV, Excel or JSON from the run page, or through the API into Python, Google Sheets, Make or Zapier.

Why did a video return nothing? The status line names the reason per video: comments turned off, video unavailable or private, age-restricted, members-only, live chat only, or zero comments. None of these is charged.

How many comments can I get per run? Up to 10,000 per video and up to 500 videos per run. For very large jobs, split them over several runs.

Related YouTube actors

• YouTube Search Scraper: videos, Shorts and channels for any search query.
• YouTube Channel Scraper: a channel's videos, Shorts and About details.
• YouTube Shorts Scraper: Shorts by search or by channel.
• YouTube Channel Email Scraper: creator contact details and links for outreach.
• YouTube Transcript Scraper: transcripts for a whole list of videos, in the language you want.

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