YouTube Scraper: Videos, Channels, Shorts, $1 per 1,000 Results
Scrape YouTube without an API key. Four modes in one actor: keyword search, channel videos, single-video detail, channel Shorts. Each result includes title, view_count, like_count, comment_count, duration, tags, thumbnail, channel info with subscriber count, is_short / is_live / is_premiere flags, computed engagement_rate, and optional full details (description, tags, category, language) via includeDetails.
Modes
search, channel, video, shorts
Anti-Bot
SSR + IP rotation
What you can scrape
- Identity: id, video_url, title, type (video, channel, short), is_short, is_live, is_premiere
- Engagement: view_count, like_count, comment_count, engagement_rate (computed percentage)
- Channel context: channel_id, channel_name, channel_subscribers, channel_url
- Content: description, tags, category, language, duration, duration_seconds, thumbnail_url
- Timing: published_at (ISO timestamp)
- Provenance: search_query (for search mode), source_url, scraped_at
Primary use cases
- Niche keyword research. Search YouTube for "python tutorial" sorted by views, see which titles dominate the niche
- Channel performance audit. Pull every video on a creator's channel and compute median engagement_rate over the last 100 uploads
- Shorts trend mining. Use shorts mode on 50 channels to find which Shorts formats are gaining traction in a vertical
- Sponsored content matching. Detect tags and titles patterns to identify brand-sponsored episodes in a creator's catalog
- SEO competitor tracking. Daily snapshot of view_count for competitor uploads to track ranking shifts and viral moments
API example
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/santamaria-automations~youtube-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"mode": "channel",
"urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"],
"maxResults": 100,
"sortBy": "views",
"includeDetails": true
}'
Integrations
- n8n, Make, Zapier: trigger runs and stream new video records via webhook
- AI Agents (MCP): Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, LangChain, LlamaIndex
- Python, Node.js: Apify SDK for programmatic access
- Google Sheets, Airtable: queries or channel URLs in, full video CSV out
Output fields
| Field | Type | Example |
|---|
| id | string | dQw4w9WgXcQ |
| title | string | How to Code in Python |
| view_count | integer | 1,500,000 |
| like_count | integer | 45,000 |
| comment_count | integer | 3,200 |
| engagement_rate | number | 3.2 |
| duration | string | 12:34 |
| channel_name | string | TechTutorials |
| is_short | boolean | false |
| thumbnail_url | string | https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg |
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