YouTube Channel ID Finder

Turn YouTube handles (@MrBeast), usernames, or any channel URL into the canonical channel ID (UC…) — the identifier every YouTube API, scraper, and analytics tool actually wants. Batch in, clean JSON out.

Each result also includes the channel title and subscriber count, so you can sanity-check you resolved the right channel.

Use cases

• Feeding APIs & scrapers — the YouTube Data API and most actors need UC… IDs, but humans collect handles and URLs. This bridges the gap in bulk.
• Cleaning creator lists — turn a messy spreadsheet of channel links into canonical IDs.
• Deduplication — handles change; channel IDs don't. Resolve everything to IDs and dedupe reliably.

Input

{
  "channels": [
    "@MrBeast",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
    "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA"
  ]
}

Accepts handles (with or without @), full channel URLs (/@handle, /channel/UC…, /c/…, /user/…), or existing UC… IDs (resolved anyway, confirming title + subscribers).

Output

One dataset item per successfully resolved channel — failed lookups are logged and skipped, never charged:

{
  "input": "@MrBeast",
  "channelId": "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
  "title": "MrBeast",
  "subscribers": "506M"
}

The run status message reports how many resolved and which inputs failed.

How it works

Fetches each channel page through Apify residential proxy and reads the canonical channel ID straight from the page markup — no browser, no YouTube API key, no quota. Subscriber counts are YouTube's compact numbers ("1.2M").

Limitations (honest ones)

• Terminated/renamed channels resolve to nothing — reported as failed, not charged.
• Lookups run sequentially (~1–2s per channel). Fine for hundreds; for tens of thousands, split into parallel runs.