YouTube Podcast Scraper — Top Charts, Popular Shows & Episodes

Scrape YouTube podcasts without an account, straight from YouTube Music's podcast pages:

• 🏆 Weekly top podcast chart — the 50 top shows this week in the United States, Canada and Mexico, ranked.
• 🔥 Popular shows and episodes in any country — the ~180-200 most popular shows and the 200 most popular episodes, ranked, for India, the UK, Brazil, Germany, Japan and 60+ more countries.
• 🗂️ Shows by category — Comedy, Sports, True crime, Business, Society & culture, Political commentary, Music, Gaming, Religion & spirituality, Science & technology, TV & film, Health & wellness, History, Arts & fiction.
• 🔍 Search podcasts or episodes by keyword.
• 🎧 Every episode of a show — paste a show link and get its episodes newest first, as many as the show has, with an optional "newer than" date.

Every episode comes with its publish date, plus views, length and the full description (episodes found by search get these with Show details); every show with its author and channel, links to YouTube Music and YouTube, and (optionally) its description. No login, no cookies, no API key, no browser — results arrive in seconds.

📦 What you get

Mode	Rows
Weekly top podcast chart (US, CA, MX)	50 shows: rank, title, author, channel, links, chart name.
Popular (any country)	Shows (~180-200, ranked) or episodes (200, ranked), or both.
Shows by category	24 shows per category (14 categories), with their position in the category.
Search	Shows or episodes (or both) for each search term (50 of each per term by default).
Show and episode links	The show (with description) and its newest episodes (20 by default, any number), or single episodes.

Add Episodes per show to any list to also get the newest episodes of every show found, and Show details to add each show's description.

⚙️ Input examples

This week's top podcasts in the US (the default):

{ "mode": "charts", "country": "US" }

The 200 most popular podcast episodes in India, published in the last 7 days:

{ "mode": "popular", "country": "IN", "resultType": "episodes", "newerThan": "7 days" }

All True crime and Business shows, each with its description and 5 newest episodes:

{ "mode": "category", "categories": ["True crime", "Business"], "includeShowDetails": true, "maxEpisodesPerShow": 5 }

Search podcasts about investing:

{ "mode": "search", "searchQueries": ["investing", "personal finance"], "maxResults": 20 }

Every episode of two shows from this year:

{
  "mode": "shows",
  "showUrls": [
    "https://music.youtube.com/browse/MPSPPLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ",
    "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk1Sqn_f33KuWf3tW9BBe_4TP7x8l0m3T"
  ],
  "maxEpisodesPerShow": 1000,
  "newerThan": "2026-01-01"
}

Field	What it does
mode	charts, popular, category, search or shows. Empty = the weekly chart (or Popular for a country without one).
country	Two-letter code. The chart and the popular lists differ by country; categories are the same everywhere.
resultType	shows, episodes or both (Popular and Search).
categories	Category names for category (empty = all 14).
searchQueries	Search terms for search.
showUrls	Show links (music.youtube.com/browse/MPSP…, YouTube or YouTube Music playlist?list=PL…) and episode links (/browse/MPED…, watch links) for shows.
maxEpisodesPerShow	Newest episodes per show: 20 for show links when empty; set it to add episodes to any list.
includeShowDetails	Add every show's description (and views, length and description for episodes found by search).
newerThan	Only episodes published on or after this day (2026-09-01, 7 days).
maxResults	The most shows / episodes per list, category and search term per result type — both saves up to this many shows and this many episodes per term (for show links: per run).

📤 Output

A show:

{
  "type": "show",
  "title": "Financial Audit",
  "showId": "MPSPPLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ",
  "playlistId": "PLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ",
  "url": "https://music.youtube.com/browse/MPSPPLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ",
  "youtubeUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ",
  "author": "Caleb Hammer",
  "channelId": "UCLe_q9axMaeTbjN0hy1Z9xA",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLe_q9axMaeTbjN0hy1Z9xA",
  "description": "…",
  "rank": 1,
  "position": null,
  "category": null,
  "country": "US",
  "chart": "Weekly top podcast shows",
  "source": { "mode": "charts", "input": "US" },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-10T02:10:00.000Z"
}

An episode:

{
  "type": "episode",
  "title": "The Most UNHINGED Woman In Financial Audit History",
  "videoId": "QhrjI7-Y788",
  "episodeId": "MPEDQhrjI7-Y788",
  "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=QhrjI7-Y788",
  "youtubeUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhrjI7-Y788",
  "showTitle": "Financial Audit",
  "showId": "MPSPPLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ",
  "views": 716000,
  "viewsText": "716K views",
  "publishedText": "11h ago",
  "publishedDate": "2026-10-09",
  "duration": "1 hr 33 min",
  "durationSeconds": 5580,
  "description": "…",
  "position": 1
}

Every row has the same keys (empty values are null), so CSV and Excel columns always line up. The dataset has three table views: Shows & episodes, Shows and Episodes. The run's key-value store holds RUN_REPORT (how the run ended, rows per type, skipped links).

💵 Pricing

Pay per event:

Event	When	Price
Actor start	once per run (per GB of memory; the default 256 MB = 1)	$0.001
Result	one show or episode saved to your dataset	$0.0019 ($1.90 per 1,000) on the Free and Bronze plans, $0.0015 on Silver, $0.0011 on Gold, $0.0008 on Platinum, $0.0006 ($0.60 per 1,000) on Diamond

Examples on the Free plan: this week's top 50 US podcasts = $0.001 + 50 × $0.0019 = $0.096; one show with 200 episodes = $0.001 + 201 × $0.0019 = $0.383. Show details and the episodes your date filter skips add nothing; a show link that doesn't exist, a link that isn't a podcast and a run YouTube Music blocks cost nothing beyond the start. Set a maximum cost per run and the actor stops before going over it.

❓ FAQ

Do I need a YouTube account, cookies or an API key? No. Everything comes from the podcast pages YouTube Music shows any visitor who is not logged in.

Which countries are covered? The weekly top podcast chart exists for the United States, Canada and Mexico. The popular shows and episodes lists exist for every country in YouTube Music's country menu (60+), and they differ by country. The category lists are the same in every country today.

How far back do a show's episodes go? As far as the show goes: 20 episodes come with the show page, then 100 per page. Set Episodes per show to the number you want, and Episodes newer than to stop at a date.

How exact are publish dates? YouTube Music shows recent episodes as "11h ago" or "3d ago" and older ones as "Sep 14" or "Dec 1, 2025". publishedText is that text; publishedDate is the day it stands for (YYYY-MM-DD), accurate to about a day for recent episodes.

Can I monitor new episodes? Yes — schedule the actor with Show and episode links (or a popular list) and Episodes newer than = 1 day; use videoId to keep only the episodes you haven't seen.

Does it collect podcasters' emails or contact details? No. Descriptions are returned as YouTube Music shows them; the actor does not extract emails, phone numbers or other contact details.

Is it legal to scrape YouTube podcasts? The actor reads only publicly available information that anyone can see on YouTube Music without signing in: show and episode titles, view counts, dates, descriptions and the public names of podcast channels. Rows can contain people's names (hosts and channel names), which laws such as GDPR (EU), PIPEDA (Canada) and CCPA (California) protect, so use the data for a legitimate purpose and follow YouTube's terms. Descriptions are copyrighted by their authors. If you're unsure whether your use case is legitimate, check with a lawyer. Background reading: Is web scraping legal?

What if YouTube Music blocks a request? Each request is retried on fresh IPs. If YouTube Music refuses the whole run, it stops early and says so instead of spending your money — you pay nothing beyond the start, and the status message tells you to try again later. Runs always finish with the rows collected so far and a plain status message.

Something missing or wrong? Open an issue on the actor page and include your input.