YouTube Videos Scraper

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YouTube Videos Scraper extracts structured YouTube video data from search queries, channels, channel URLs, and video URLs without requiring a YouTube API key or account login.

At a glance: input examples include search queries, channel handles, and video URLs; output examples are video rows with titles, IDs, URLs, views, durations, thumbnails, and channel data; use cases include SEO, monitoring, and competitor research; limitations, troubleshooting, and pricing/cost notes are covered below.

Use it to collect video IDs, titles, URLs, descriptions, view counts, publish text, durations, thumbnails, and channel information for market research, content research, influencer discovery, SEO analysis, brand monitoring, and competitor tracking.

What You Can Do

• Find videos for one or more YouTube search queries.
• Pull recent uploads from YouTube @handles, channel IDs, or channel URLs.
• Add direct YouTube video URLs when you already know the videos you want.
• Cap total results to control cost.
• Remove duplicate videos across mixed inputs.
• Export clean JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML from the Apify dataset.

Input

The easiest setup is:

{
"searchQueries":["openai","ai tutorials"],
"channels":["@OpenAI"],
"maxItems":10,
"maxTotalVideos":50
}

Basic Options

Advanced Options

Existing integrations that use keywords, maxVideosPerKeyword, and maxVideosPerChannel can continue using those fields.

Output

The Actor writes one video record per dataset item. The OUTPUT key-value record contains run metadata, totals, warnings, and links to the dataset.

Example dataset item:

{
"record_type":"video",
"query_type":"direct_search",
"query":"openai",
"video_id":"Rlju1Z9e110",
"url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlju1Z9e110",
"title":"Analyze earnings and update your investment thesis with Codex",
"description":"See how the public equity investing plugin for Codex turns a company's latest quarter into a post-earnings analysis.",
"published_text":"23 hours ago",
"duration_text":"1:29",
"view_count":7272,
"view_count_text":"7,272 views",
"channel_id":"UCXZCJLdBC09xxGZ6gcdrc6A",
"channel_name":"OpenAI",
"channel_handle":"@OpenAI",
"channel_url":"https://www.youtube.com/@OpenAI",
"thumbnail_url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Rlju1Z9e110/hq720.jpg",
"from_instance":"youtube_direct",
"scraped_at":"2026-06-13T19:40:35Z"
}

Fields may be empty when YouTube does not expose that value on the loaded page.

How To Run On Apify

1. Open the Actor on Apify.
2. Enter search queries, channels, or YouTube URLs.
3. Set maxItems and optionally maxTotalVideos.
4. Click Start.
5. Open the Dataset tab to preview or export results.

You can download results as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, or HTML from the Dataset tab.

Python API Example

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run_input ={
"searchQueries":["openai","ai tutorials"],
"channels":["@OpenAI"],
"maxItems":10,
"maxTotalVideos":50,
}
run = client.actor("thescrapelab/Apify-YouTube-Videos-Scraper-2-0").call(run_input=run_input)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
print(item["title"], item["url"], item.get("view_count"))

Limits And Caveats

• This Actor scrapes public YouTube pages. It does not use the official YouTube Data API.
• YouTube can change page structure, availability, or anti-bot behavior, which may affect results.
• Search results are YouTube's public web results for the loaded query and may differ by time, region, or ranking.
• Very large runs should use maxTotalVideos so cost remains predictable.
• Direct extraction is tried first for lower cost. Fallback extraction may take longer but improves result coverage.

Troubleshooting

Pricing Notes

The Actor is optimized for low compute cost by using HTTP page extraction instead of a browser. For paid Store monetization, a simple pay-per-result model is recommended because each dataset item maps to one useful video record.

Suggested pricing should be configured in Apify Console after measuring current production runs. A conservative starting point is a per-result event with volume discounts for larger users.

FAQ

Can I scrape YouTube videos without a YouTube API key?

Yes. This Actor reads public YouTube web pages and does not require a YouTube Data API key.

Can I scrape videos from a YouTube channel?

Yes. Add a channel handle, channel ID, or channel URL to channels or startUrls.

Can I scrape YouTube search results?

Yes. Add one or more terms to searchQueries.

Can I export YouTube video data to CSV or Excel?

Yes. After the run finishes, open the Dataset tab and export the results in your preferred format.

Does this Actor scrape comments, transcripts, or full video files?

No. It focuses on video listing metadata such as title, URL, views, duration, publish text, thumbnail, and channel fields.

Is login required?

No. The Actor is designed for publicly available YouTube pages.