YouTube Video & Channel Scraper

Extract YouTube video data via official API v3: titles, views, likes, comments, thumbnails, channel stats, tags. Search by keyword or scrape entire channels. Requires YouTube API key. Perfect for content research, competitor analysis, trend monitoring.

Use cases

• Research a keyword's competition and top-performing videos
• Track a channel's upload cadence and view growth
• Benchmark competitor channels for content strategy
• Build a video-discovery or curation feed
• Collect metadata for thumbnail and title analysis

Input

You need your own free YouTube Data API v3 key. Get one at https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/youtube.googleapis.com — it takes a minute and costs nothing. Without it the Actor cannot fetch data.

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
apiKey	string	No	—	Your YouTube Data API v3 key. Get it from Google Cloud Console.
keyword	string	No	"machine learning"	Keyword to search for videos (required for search mode)
channelId	string	No	—	Optional: Scrape specific channel's data
maxResults	integer	No	50	Maximum number of results to return (1-500)
sort	string	No	"relevance"	Sort results by Allowed: relevance, date, viewCount, rating.
videoType	string	No	"any"	Filter by video type Allowed: any, episode, movie.
videoDuration	string	No	"any"	Filter by video duration Allowed: any, short, medium, long.

Example input

{
  "keyword": "machine learning",
  "maxResults": 50,
  "sort": "relevance",
  "videoType": "any",
  "videoDuration": "any",
  "apiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"
}

Output

Each dataset item has the following shape (fields vary by mode):

Field	Type
videoId	string
title	string
channelTitle	string
viewCount	number
likeCount	number
publishedAt	string
url	string

The dataset also ships a preset table view (Overview), so the key columns are readable straight away in Apify Console, and exportable to JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML.

How to run it

In Apify Console — open the Actor, fill in the input form, click Start, then download the results from the Dataset tab.

With the JavaScript client

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('cloud9_ai/youtube-scraper').call({
  "keyword": "machine learning",
  "maxResults": 50,
  "sort": "relevance",
  "videoType": "any",
  "videoDuration": "any",
  "apiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

With the Python client

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')

run = client.actor('cloud9_ai/youtube-scraper').call(run_input={
  "keyword": "machine learning",
  "maxResults": 50,
  "sort": "relevance",
  "videoType": "any",
  "videoDuration": "any",
  "apiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"
})

for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(item)

With the API — POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cloud9_ai~youtube-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN with the input JSON as the body.

Notes and limits

• Bring your own YouTube Data API v3 key (free — https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/youtube.googleapis.com). It is a secret input, so it is not written to the dataset or the log.
• maxResults caps how much a single run collects, which is also what caps the run's cost.
• Requests to the source are paced to stay inside its rate limits.
• Only publicly available data is collected. How you use the output is your responsibility, including the source's terms of use and any applicable data-protection law.

Support

Found a bug, or need a field that isn't in the output? Open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor in Apify Console. Issues there are read and answered.

License

Apache-2.0