YouTube Playlist Scraper - Export Videos to CSV

Turn known public YouTube playlists into a video table. Export titles, watch URLs, available durations and views, with playlist context and a position in the returned batch. No YouTube API key or media download is required.

Try a small export: Python tutorial playlist example. Free-plan result events cost $1.5 per 1,000 playlist video records, plus the Actor-start event. Check the Pricing tab for your account’s discounts.

Tested input

{
  "playlistUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-osiE80TeTt2d9bfVyTiXJA-UTHn6WwU"
  ],
  "maxResults": 3
}

Run the Actor, open Dataset → Overview, then export JSON, CSV or Excel. The example above returned 3 records in a September 10, 2026 test run. Source availability and ordering can change.

Real output

Selected fields from that run:

{
  "playlist_id": "PL-osiE80TeTt2d9bfVyTiXJA-UTHn6WwU",
  "playlist_title": "Python Tutorials",
  "video_id": "YYXdXT2l-Gg",
  "title": "Python Tutorial for Beginners 1: Install and Setup for Mac and Windows",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYXdXT2l-Gg",
  "duration_seconds": 929,
  "view_count": 4300000,
  "playlist_index": 1
}

Input controls

Supply playlistUrls as one URL or a list of up to 20 HTTPS YouTube playlist URLs containing a list ID. Repeated canonical playlist URLs run once. maxResults is a per-playlist candidate limit, from 1 to 500, with a default of 10. The Actor does not persist IDs between runs. Videos in different playlists remain separate rows so playlist membership is preserved.

Scope and field availability

This is a bounded public playlist export, not a video-detail or complete-history guarantee. Private, deleted or unavailable entries may not be delivered. playlist_index is one-based within the returned candidate batch; it should not be used to infer hidden playlist members. Channel fields and descriptions can be null in flat search data.

Costs, limits and failures

On the Free plan, each exported playlist video record costs $0.0015. The start event costs $0.00005 per allocated GB, with a minimum of one event. At 512 MB, the 3-record example costs $0.00455 in Actor events before discounts. Prices remain unchanged in this update.

Set a maximum charge in the run options. Delivery stops when the result budget is reached. Duplicate input URLs or IDs are collapsed before retrieval; rerunning the same input later is a new billable observation. Limits are upper bounds, not guaranteed row counts.

The Output tab links to SUMMARY. Source errors fail the run while retaining any valid rows already exported; successful earlier rows retain their result charges. Inspect the summary, dataset and run log before retrying. An unavailable source is not evidence that a channel, playlist or video was deleted. A legitimate empty collection or a filter excluding every video can still return zero rows successfully.

Export an existing run with Python

Install apify-client, set APIFY_TOKEN and APIFY_DATASET_ID, and export the completed dataset without starting another run:

import json
import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
rows = list(client.dataset(os.environ["APIFY_DATASET_ID"]).iterate_items())
with open("youtube-playlist-extractor.json", "w", encoding="utf-8") as output:
    json.dump(rows, output, ensure_ascii=False, indent=2)

Save a Task for each recurring input and schedule it through Apify. API and automation workflows can reuse the same input. Compare video IDs between runs when building a monitoring database.

Questions before running

Does it download videos? No. Only metadata is exported.

Are descriptions complete? Flat playlist entries may omit descriptions and channel fields. Use the video metadata tool when those fields are important.

Why are there fewer rows than the limit? The playlist may be shorter, the source may omit unavailable entries, or a spending limit may stop delivery.

Related YouTube workflows

• Keyword search discovers video URLs from phrases.
• Video metadata enriches known individual video URLs.
• Transcripts and subtitles exports available caption tracks.