YouTube Scraper: Videos, Channels, Shorts & Search (Fast)

Scrape YouTube videos, Shorts, live streams, whole channels, playlists and search results in one run: views, likes, comments count, exact publish date, duration, tags, hashtags, description links, chapters, plus channel stats on every row (subscribers, total views, video count, country, joined date, links). No browser, so it's fast and cheap. $2 per 1,000 videos in full detail, $0.50 per 1,000 in fast mode. Date filters are free. Removed or private videos are listed and cost nothing.

Why this one

	This Actor	Typical YouTube scrapers
Price	$2 / 1,000 videos (full) · $0.50 / 1,000 (fast)	$2.40–$5 / 1,000, date filter often an extra fee
Date filters	Free; also sets YouTube's own search filter so runs page less	Paid add-on or post-filtering
Speed	YouTube's lightweight app API: ~20 full videos in 7 s, 100 fast rows per request	Browser page loads
Transcripts	Optional captions as plain text on each video row, in your preferred languages — billed only when the video has captions	Separate actor, or paid AI transcription per minute
Channel stats	Subscribers, exact total views, video count, country, joined date, links on every video row, fetched once per channel	Often a separate actor or missing
Scheduled runs	Only new videos: a daily run delivers and bills only new uploads	Re-delivers and re-bills everything
Errors	Removed/private/blocked videos come back as rows with a reasonCode, never billed	Missing rows or failed runs
Switching	Accepts startUrls, searchQueries, maxResults, maxResultsShorts, maxResultStreams, oldestPostDate, sortingOrder, dateFilter, lengthFilter; output uses the common field names (viewCount, likes, commentsCount, date, duration, text, numberOfSubscribers, channelTotalViews…)	—

What it does

• Any input mix: video URLs or IDs, Shorts, @handles, channel URLs, playlist URLs, search-results URLs, and search queries (up to 200 per run).
• Whole channels: newest first, up to 5,000 per source. Pick how many regular videos, Shorts and past live streams you want from each channel.
• Channel profiles only: set Max videos to 0 with channel URLs to get one row per channel (subscribers, total views, video count, country, joined date, description, links). Good for creator lists and influencer research.
• Two detail levels:
  • Full (default): exact publish date and time, likes, comments count, views, duration, category, tags, hashtags, description and its links, chapters, Shorts/live flags, thumbnail.
  • Fast: title, views, duration and age read straight from channel, playlist and search pages: about 4× cheaper and much faster. Ideal for tracking view counts across hundreds of channels. Single video URLs always get full detail.
• Date filters: publishedAfter / publishedBefore as dates or relative (7 days, 3 months). Channel paging stops once it passes the date.
• Search filters: sort by relevance/date/views/rating, upload date (last hour → year), duration (under 4 min, 4–20, over 20), and YouTube's feature filters: HD, 4K, HDR, subtitles/CC, Creative Commons, live, 3D, 360°, VR180, location, purchased.
• Only new videos: turn it on and schedule the run. Each run skips videos it has already delivered to you.
• Built to keep working: automatic retries, cheapest network route first (direct → datacenter → residential only when YouTube pushes back), results saved as they arrive, and a run moved between servers resumes without re-delivering or re-billing anything. A run near its timeout stops cleanly and tells you what's left instead of failing.

Pricing

Pay per result, no compute fee on top:

Event	Price	When
Video (full)	$0.002	One video row with full detail
Video (fast)	$0.0005	One video row from a listing page
Channel profile	$0.002	One channel row (channel-only mode)
Error rows	free	Removed, private, or blocked videos

Volume discounts apply on higher Apify plans. Apify's free plan ($5/month credit) covers about 2,500 full or 10,000 fast videos a month. Set Maximum cost per run in Run options and the Actor stops there cleanly.

Input examples

Latest 50 videos and 20 Shorts from two channels, last 90 days:

{ "startUrls": ["@mkbhd", "https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium"], "maxResults": 50, "maxResultsShorts": 20, "publishedAfter": "90 days" }

Top 200 search results, fast mode (view tracking):

{ "searchQueries": ["pickleball highlights", "ai agents tutorial"], "maxResults": 200, "detail": "fast" }

Channel profiles only:

{ "startUrls": ["@mkbhd", "@LofiGirl", "@3blue1brown"], "maxResults": 0 }

Daily monitor (schedule it; pay only for new uploads):

{ "startUrls": ["@yourcompetitor"], "maxResults": 30, "onlyNewVideos": true }

Output

One row per video (type: "video"), channel (type: "channel"), or problem (type: "error"). Example (full detail, trimmed):

{
  "type": "video", "detail": "full", "id": "_0G4OG39XjI", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0G4OG39XjI",
  "title": "WTF is a Googlebook?", "channelName": "Marques Brownlee", "channelHandle": "@mkbhd", "channelId": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
  "date": "2026-10-08T21:00:40Z", "duration": "00:14:12", "durationSeconds": 852, "viewCount": 5258903, "likes": 77872,
  "commentsCount": 6900, "commentsCountText": "6.9K", "category": "Science & Technology", "isShort": false, "isLive": false,
  "hashtags": [], "descriptionLinks": ["http://shop.MKBHD.com"], "keywords": ["Googlebook", "MKBHD"],
  "numberOfSubscribers": 21400000, "channelTotalViews": 5755608883, "channelTotalVideos": 1857, "channelLocation": "United States",
  "channelJoinedDate": "2008-03-21", "input": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd"
}

Videos with creator chapters also get chapters: [{"start": 0, "end": 183, "title": "Predict, sample, repeat"}, …]. Fast rows carry title, viewCount, duration, durationSeconds, publishedAgo, ageDays (and channel stats unless turned off). Error rows carry reasonCode (unavailable, private, not_public, blocked, temporary_error) and retryable.

The Overview and Channels dataset views give ready tables; export to JSON, CSV, Excel, or connect Google Sheets, Make, n8n, Zapier, or call it from an AI agent through the Apify MCP server.

Good to know

• Counts are what YouTube shows: subscribers and comments are rounded by YouTube (e.g. 2.4K); views, likes and channel total views are exact. Fast-mode view counts on channel pages are rounded too (e.g. 1.2M); use full mode for exact views.
• YouTube lists up to the 100 most recent Shorts per channel, and ends a search after a few hundred results (varies by region): use several specific queries for more.
• Fast mode can't date-filter Shorts precisely (YouTube's Shorts pages show no dates); use full mode if dates matter.
• Public data only: no logins, no private or members-only videos, no emails, no downloads. Age-restricted videos may show as errors.
• Channel uploads come newest first. "Most popular" sorting of a channel isn't offered; use a search sorted by views instead.

Use cases

Competitor and creator research · influencer shortlists with subscriber and country data · view-count tracking for campaigns · trend research (pair it with Google Trends) · content-gap analysis from search results · feeding AI agents and dashboards with fresh video data. Need the spoken words too? Our YouTube Transcript Scraper takes the same URLs and returns transcripts and AI-ready chunks. What viewers say? Our YouTube Comments Scraper adds comments, replies, audience questions and the moments viewers cite.

Support

Open an issue on the Actor page; we reply within a day. Tell us the input and run ID and we'll fix it.