YouTube Search Scraper: videos by keyword via licensed YouTube SERP data

YouTube Search Scraper searches YouTube for your keywords and returns each video title, URL, video ID, channel, views, duration, publish date and thumbnail. Flat JSON, ready for spreadsheets, pipelines and AI agents.

• $0.001 per video, pay per result, no subscription (a 20-video keyword search costs $0.02).
• Licensed data: DataForSEO YouTube SERP API. No browser, no YouTube login, no residential proxies.
• Free Apify plan: 5 keywords per run.

Input example

{
    "keywords": ["best crm for small business", "hubspot crm tutorial"],
    "country": "US",
    "language": "en",
    "maxResultsPerKeyword": 20
}

queries is accepted as an alias of keywords.

Output example

One row per video (real row from a test run on Oct 19, 2026, best crm for small business, US):

{
    "keyword": "best crm for small business",
    "rank": 1,
    "title": "Best CRM Software for Small Business for 2026 (Top 5 Tested & Compared)",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIRyuq-AKOU",
    "videoId": "RIRyuq-AKOU",
    "channelName": "LYFE Accounting",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@LYFEAccounting",
    "views": 49964,
    "publishedAtIso": "2025-11-19 13:34:37 +00:00",
    "durationSecs": 682,
    "duration": "11:22",
    "isShorts": false,
    "isLive": false,
    "country": "US",
    "language": "en"
}

Other fields: channelId, description (snippet), publishedAt (relative, as YouTube shows it), thumbnailUrl, scrapedAt.

What you can use it for

• YouTube SEO and rank checks: see which videos and channels rank for your keywords, in which position (rank), in any country and language.
• Competitor and creator research: find the channels that own a topic, with views, duration and publish date.
• Content research for AI pipelines: collect video IDs for a topic, then pull their transcripts with YouTube Transcript Scraper.
• Monitoring: schedule the same keywords weekly and compare rank over time.

Use it from an AI agent (MCP)

Add this Actor as a tool in Claude, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP client with one URL:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=wrenfield-data/youtube-search-scraper

• Minimal input: {"keywords": ["best crm for small business"], "country": "US", "language": "en"}
• Cap the bill: set maxTotalChargeUsd on the run (a run option, not an input field) to limit what a run can charge.
• Rows are flat JSON with the fields documented above, so an agent can use them without post-processing.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube or Google account, or an API key? No.

How many results per keyword? Set maxResultsPerKeyword. You pay only for videos returned.

Is rank the same as what I see on YouTube? It is the position in YouTube search results for the country and language you set. Personalized results in your own browser can differ.

What about Shorts and live streams? When YouTube includes them in the results, they are flagged with isShorts and isLive.

Pricing

Event	Price
Video result (video-result)	$0.001 per video returned

Example: 10 keywords × 20 videos = $0.20. Set Maximum cost per run to cap spend.

How the data is obtained

Results come from DataForSEO's YouTube SERP API, a commercial data provider. This Actor does not open YouTube in a browser and does not use your Google account.

Feedback and support

Missing a field, hit an error, or need another country or option? Open an issue on the Issues tab and include the run ID. We read every issue and reply there.

Acceptable use

Independent tool, not affiliated with YouTube, Google or DataForSEO. Use for research and monitoring. Not for use from sanctioned jurisdictions listed in our other Actor READMEs (Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Myanmar, North Korea, Crimea, occupied Ukrainian territories).