YouTube Creator Finder

Find public YouTube channels by niche keyword, qualify creators by audience and activity, and export one clean row per channel with profile metrics, country, recent uploads, public websites, social profiles, emails disclosed in public content, and discovery evidence.

This is a creator-sourcing workflow rather than a generic video scraper. It answers: which creators match this niche, are the right size, are still active, and expose a public way to research or contact them?

No YouTube Data API key, login, browser, or proxy is required.

Quick start

{
  "searchTerms": ["coffee roasting", "home espresso"],
  "maxCreatorsPerSearch": 20,
  "minSubscribers": 5000,
  "maxSubscribers": 250000,
  "minVideos": 20,
  "uploadedWithinDays": 180,
  "requirePublicContact": true
}

The Actor searches YouTube's channel-only results, enriches every candidate from its public channel pages, applies filters before billing, deduplicates by channel ID, and saves only qualifying channels.

Why use a creator finder instead of raw YouTube search?

• Channel-only discovery avoids mixing videos, playlists, and repeated creators.
• Subscriber, video-count, country, and activity filters remove poor fits before export.
• Full public About data adds descriptions, total views, join date, websites, and social profiles.
• Recent-video context distinguishes active creators from dormant channels.
• Optional linked-website checks find emails that creators publicly place on their own sites.
• Every row preserves the first keyword and rank that discovered the creator.

Inputs

Input	Purpose	Default
searchTerms	Creator niches or keywords	coffee roasting
channelUrls	Known @handle or /channel/UC... URLs to enrich	none
maxCreatorsPerSearch	Qualifying creators per keyword	20
maxTotalCreators	Global run cap	100
minSubscribers / maxSubscribers	Audience-size range	none
minVideos	Minimum public video count	none
country	Exact public channel-country label	none
uploadedWithinDays	Approximate recent-activity limit	none
requirePublicContact	Require an email, website, or social profile	false
crawlLinkedWebsites	Check the first public non-social website for emails/socials	false
maxWebsitePages	Website pages checked when enrichment is on	2
languageHint / countryHint	YouTube locale hints	en / US

Output

Each billed row is one unique channel that passed the selected filters:

{
  "recordType": "youtube_creator",
  "channelId": "UCfpTQQtvqLhHG_GWhk3Xp4A",
  "handle": "@MillCityRoasters",
  "title": "Mill City Roasters®",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfpTQQtvqLhHG_GWhk3Xp4A",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@MillCityRoasters",
  "description": "...",
  "subscriberCount": 42500,
  "videoCount": 201,
  "totalViewCount": 2538445,
  "country": "United States",
  "joinedDateText": "Joined 7 Feb 2014",
  "verified": false,
  "websiteUrls": ["https://millcityroasters.com"],
  "socialProfiles": {
    "instagram": "https://instagram.com/millcityroasters",
    "facebook": "https://facebook.com/millcityroasters",
    "tiktok": "https://tiktok.com/@millcityroasters"
  },
  "publicEmails": [],
  "businessEmailRequiresLogin": true,
  "latestVideo": {
    "videoId": "...",
    "title": "...",
    "publishedText": "2 months ago",
    "ageDaysEstimate": 60,
    "viewCount": 841
  },
  "discoveryQuery": "coffee roasting",
  "discoveryRank": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-12T00:00:00Z"
}

YouTube's login-gated business email is not bypassed. businessEmailRequiresLogin: true means YouTube displays that gate; it is not reported as an email. publicEmails contains only addresses visible in public descriptions or, when explicitly enabled, public linked websites.

Common workflows

• Source micro- and mid-tier creators for campaign review.
• Build niche channel lists for sponsorship research.
• Find active podcasts, educators, reviewers, or B2B experts.
• Compare creator supply across countries or topics.
• Enrich known channel URLs for CRM or research pipelines.
• Schedule recurring discovery and compare new channel IDs over time.

Pricing and cost control

The entry tier is $0.0025 per qualifying creator. Rejected candidates, duplicates, inaccessible pages, and filters that produce no result are not charged. BRONZE, SILVER, and GOLD reduce the unit price for volume.

Set strict result caps and test one keyword first. Website contact enrichment adds requests, so keep it disabled unless public website emails are useful to the workflow.

Limitations and troubleshooting

• Public data only. The Actor does not bypass logins, private channels, hidden subscriber counts, or YouTube's business-email gate.
• Activity is an estimate from YouTube's relative label such as 2 months ago; months are normalized to 30 days and years to 365 days for filtering.
• Channels with hidden fields fail filters that require those fields.
• External links are whatever the channel publicly exposes. Verify identity and permission before outreach.
• Website enrichment checks at most three public pages on the first non-social site. Private-network addresses and unsafe redirects are refused.
• Search rankings and available channels vary by locale and over time.
• YouTube can change its internal page payloads. If a previously working input returns no rows, attach the run URL to an Actor issue.

Use public contact data lawfully. Follow applicable anti-spam, privacy, data-protection, and platform rules before contacting anyone.