YouTube Comments Scraper: Replies, Filters & Insights

Get YouTube comments and replies from any mix of videos, Shorts, whole channels, playlists and searches, filtered to what you need (keywords, questions, likes, moments mentioned), with a free insight row per video. Schedule it with Only new comments and each run delivers and bills only comments you haven't seen. $0.50 per 1,000 comments, no per-video fee, no compute fee.

Why this one

	This Actor	Typical comment scrapers
Input	Videos, Shorts, channels (latest N videos), playlists, searches, mixed	Video URLs
Price	$0.50 / 1,000, no start or per-video fee	$0.50–$2 / 1,000, often + per-video or start fees
Replies	Full threads with replyToCid, capped per comment, loaded in parallel	Missing, or priced unclearly
Filters	Keywords, exclude words, min likes, questions only, comments citing a moment, creator-engaged	None: download everything, filter later
Monitoring	Only new comments: a scheduled run stops as soon as it reaches comments it delivered before	Re-delivers and re-bills everything
Insights	Free summary per video: questions, creator hearts, hot moments viewers cite, top words	—
Privacy	Optional privacy mode: no names or channel links, keyed author IDs	—
Errors	Comments off / removed / blocked → a free row with reasonCode	Empty results or failed run
Switching	Accepts startUrls, maxComments/maxItems, sortCommentsBy/sort, oldestCommentDate, includeReplies; output uses cid, comment, author, voteCount, replyCount, hasCreatorHeart, authorIsChannelOwner, replyToCid, pageUrl, title	—

What it does

• Any source: video IDs or URLs, Shorts, @handles and channel URLs (comments from their latest videos), playlists, search URLs and queries.
• Top or newest: YouTube's own order. Only comments newer than (7 days, 2026-10-01) switches to newest and stops paging at the first older comment, so you pay only for recent ones.
• Replies: turn on Include replies to get each thread under its comment (type: "reply", replyToCid), up to your cap per comment.
• Filters: keep comments that mention your words, drop ones with excluded words, require minimum likes, only questions, only comments that cite a moment (e.g. "2:31", with a deep link), or only comments the creator hearted or wrote. Filtered-out comments are read but not delivered and cost $0.05 per 1,000.
• Only new comments: remembers what it delivered per video. Schedule it hourly or daily for brand monitoring, community management or a support inbox.
• Every comment row: text, author, author channel ID, likes, reply count, pinned, creator heart, creator/verified/artist flags, posted text ("3 days ago") with ageDays and an approximate date, edited flag, question flag, word count, moments mentioned, a link straight to the comment, its rank, plus the video's title, channel, views and publish date.
• Video summary row (free): comments read and delivered, YouTube's comment count, questions, creator hearts, hot moments (the times viewers cite most, with links) and top words.
• Privacy mode: removes names and channel links and adds authorId, a keyed hash: one author's comments stay linkable in your data, but can't be looked up.
• Built to keep working: YouTube's lightweight app API (no browser), ~7× less data per page than a plain request, cheapest network route first, automatic retries, results saved page by page, resume after a server move without re-billing, and a clean stop before the run timeout.

Pricing

Event	Price	When
Comment	$0.0005	Each delivered comment or reply
Comment scanned	$0.00005	A comment read but dropped by your filters
Summary rows, error rows, already-seen comments	free	—

Lower prices on higher Apify plans. The free plan's $5 monthly credit covers about 10,000 comments. Set Maximum cost per run and the Actor stops exactly there.

Input examples

Top 500 comments with replies:

{ "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"], "maxComments": 500, "includeReplies": true, "maxRepliesPerComment": 10 }

Audience questions across a channel's last 10 videos:

{ "startUrls": ["@mkbhd"], "maxVideosPerSource": 10, "maxComments": 2000, "onlyQuestions": true }

Brand monitor (schedule daily):

{ "searchQueries": ["your brand review"], "maxVideosPerSource": 20, "keywords": ["your brand"], "sort": "newest", "onlyNewComments": true }

Last 48 hours of comments:

{ "startUrls": ["https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID"], "commentsNewerThan": "2 days", "maxComments": 10000 }

Output

{
  "type": "comment", "cid": "Ugzge340dBgB75hWBm54AaABAg", "comment": "can confirm: he never gave us up",
  "author": "@YouTube", "authorChannelId": "UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ", "authorIsVerified": true, "authorIsChannelOwner": false,
  "voteCount": 325000, "replyCount": 962, "hasCreatorHeart": true, "isPinned": true, "publishedTimeText": "1 year ago",
  "ageDays": 365, "publishedApprox": "2025-10-10", "isQuestion": false, "timestamps": [], "rank": 1,
  "commentUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&lc=Ugzge340dBgB75hWBm54AaABAg",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ", "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "channelName": "Rick Astley", "commentsCount": 2400000, "sortedBy": "top"
}

Video summary (real run, MKBHD, questions only): "hotMoments": [{"seconds": 165, "mentions": 9, "url": "…&t=165s"}, {"seconds": 812, "mentions": 9, …}].

Views: Comments and Video summaries tables. Export JSON, CSV, Excel, or connect Google Sheets, Make, n8n, Zapier, or an AI agent via the Apify MCP server.

Good to know

• YouTube shows comment dates only as "3 days ago": ageDays is a lower bound and publishedApprox an approximate date. Likes and comment counts are rounded by YouTube (e.g. 325K).
• Replies count on top of Max comments per video, which counts top-level comments.
• With Newest first, YouTube keeps the pinned comment at the top; date filters skip it rather than stop on it.
• Public comments only: no logins, no emails, no members-only content. Respect privacy laws when you store or use names; privacy mode helps.

Use cases

Audience research and content ideas (questions, hot moments) · brand and competitor monitoring · community management · product feedback and reviews · sentiment and topic analysis · datasets for AI agents and dashboards. Pair it with our YouTube Scraper (video and channel data) and YouTube Transcript Scraper (what was said).

Support

Open an issue on the Actor page with the run ID; we reply within a day.