YouTube Channel + Video Scraper — Free, No API Key

Turn any YouTube channel or video URL into clean structured data. Channel video lists, full video metadata (views, likes, tags, duration, thumbnails), and optional comments — all free, no Google API key, no quotas, no login.

Powered by yt-dlp, the gold-standard YouTube extraction library used by millions. This Actor wraps it in a tidy input/output interface and runs it on Apify's infrastructure.

✨ Why this Actor

• Free — most YouTube scrapers on the Apify Store charge $20-50/mo. This one is $0.
• No Google API key — the official YouTube Data API has a 10,000-unit/day quota and requires OAuth. This Actor bypasses both.
• No login — works on public videos and channels.
• Battle-tested — yt-dlp handles every YouTube edge case (signature decryption, age gates, region restrictions, livestreams, shorts).

🚀 Quick start

Get every video on MKBHD's channel:

{
  "source": "channel",
  "channel": "@mkbhd",
  "maxVideos": 100
}

Get full metadata + comments for a specific video:

{
  "source": "video",
  "videos": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"],
  "maxComments": 200
}

Get videos from a channel ID:

{
  "source": "channel",
  "channel": "UCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q",
  "maxVideos": 50,
  "enrichDetails": true
}

📦 Output schema

Channel mode (lightweight)

Field	Type	Notes
id	str	11-char video ID
title	str	Video title
url	str	Full youtube.com/watch?v=… URL
duration	int	Seconds
view_count	int	Lifetime views (when available)
channel_id	str	UC… ID
channel	str	Channel display name

Video mode (full metadata)

Everything above plus:

Field	Type	Notes
description	str	Full video description
like_count, comment_count	int	Engagement counts
upload_date	str	YYYY-MM-DD
categories, tags	array	YouTube category + tags
thumbnail	str	Highest-res thumbnail URL
language	str	Auto-detected language code
live_status	str	not_live / was_live / is_live / is_upcoming
channel_follower_count	int	Subscriber count at scrape time
comments	array	When maxComments > 0. Each: id, text, author, like_count, timestamp, parent

🎯 Use cases

• Channel auditing — pull every video from a competitor, sort by views, see what works
• Content trend tracking — sweep N channels daily, find rising topics
• Comment sentiment analysis — feed comments into an LLM, score sentiment, detect themes
• Build a video search engine — index titles + descriptions across niche channels
• Auto-tweet new uploads — schedule daily, post the latest video
• YouTube SEO research — see which tags + categories successful videos use
• Sponsorship outreach — find channels in a niche, get subscriber counts + recent engagement

⚙️ Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Notes
source	str	channel	channel or video
channel	str	—	Required for source=channel. @handle, full URL, or channel ID
videos	array	[]	Required for source=video. URLs or 11-char IDs
maxVideos	int	50	Channel mode cap
enrichDetails	bool	false	Channel mode: fetch full per-video metadata (slower but richer)
maxComments	int	0	Video mode: comments per video (0 = none)

🛠️ How it works

This Actor wraps yt-dlp, the most actively maintained YouTube extraction library. It hits YouTube's public web endpoints (the same ones the website uses), parses the JSON player config, and returns structured data.

No API key required because yt-dlp uses unauthenticated public endpoints. No login required because all returned data is from public videos.

⚠️ Tips & caveats

• Channel mode is fast (~1 sec per 50 videos) because it uses YouTube's flat playlist endpoint. Set enrichDetails: true only when you need per-video stats — it adds ~1 sec per video.
• Comments scraping is slow (~5-10 sec per 100 comments) and YouTube paginates aggressively. Stick to maxComments: 100-500 per video for reasonable runtimes.
• Some channels block extraction — if you see Video unavailable, the channel owner has restricted scraping. Rare but happens.
• Live streams return partial data while live; full metadata becomes available after the stream ends.

🔗 Related Actors

Building a media intelligence stack? Combine with:

• Reddit Subreddit + Search Scraper — find what's being discussed on r/videos, r/youtubehelp
• Product Hunt Daily Launches — catch trending tools that go viral on YouTube
• GitHub Trending Repositories — for dev-YouTube — see what code is exploding

💬 Support & feedback

Issues, feature requests, or want a custom YouTube-related scraper? Email caspersmartwater@gmail.com.

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