YouTube Scraper via the Official API — Video Details, Search and Stats

What it does

Most YouTube scrapers load youtube.com pages through proxies and break whenever the page layout or bot checks change. This actor takes a different route: it calls the official YouTube Data API v3 with an API key you create yourself in a free Google Cloud project. Nothing is scraped from youtube.com, and there are no proxies, cookies or logins involved.

The default videos mode accepts watch URLs, youtu.be links, Shorts, embed and live links or bare 11-character IDs, and returns one row per video: title, description, channel, published date, duration in seconds, view, like and comment counts, tags, category, default language, thumbnails, live status, made-for-kids flag and topic categories. IDs are batched 50 per API call, so one quota unit covers 50 videos. The same actor also switches to search, channel or comments mode through the mode field.

It suits analysts building YouTube dashboards, marketers doing competitor and trend research, and developers who want a stable feed into Sheets, Make, n8n or Zapier. Pricing is $0.40 per 1,000 video rows, and the free quota on one key covers about 500,000 video lookups a day. ActorForge is not affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube or Google.

How it works

1. You paste your own YouTube Data API v3 key into the secret apiKey field; Apify stores it encrypted and the actor never logs it or writes it to the output.
2. Video URLs and IDs are normalised, duplicates are removed, and the IDs are sent to videos.list in batches of 50.
3. Each video comes back as a schema-validated row with stats, duration in seconds and an isShort heuristic (3 minutes or less and not live).
4. Invalid, private, deleted or missing videos become free error rows instead of failing the run.
5. If your key hits a 403 quotaExceeded error, the run stops cleanly, keeps the rows already delivered and does not charge for the failed call.

Input example

A typical run input (JSON). Every field is also available as a form in the Apify console.

{
  "apiKey": "AIzaSy...your-own-key",
  "mode": "videos",
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "9bZkp7q19f0"
  ]
}

Output example

Each video URL or ID becomes one row with its title, channel, publish date, duration and engagement counts, as in these real examples:

Pricing

Pay per event: you are charged only for the results you receive, with no subscription. Set a maximum total charge on any run and it stops cleanly at the cap.

Prices are read from the live Apify Store listing when this page is built. The listing is always authoritative.

Use cases

How it compares

If you already maintain your own API client, calling the YouTube Data API directly costs nothing beyond your quota and is the better choice. If you cannot or will not create a Google Cloud API key, a no-key scraper is the only option, at the cost of depending on youtube.com's pages.

Limits and honest notes

• You need your own free YouTube Data API v3 key (see the 4-step guide above). Without one the run stops at once with instructions, and nothing is charged.
• Quota is per Google Cloud project: 10,000 units/day for free. Unit costs: videos.list, channels.list, playlistItems.list, commentThreads.list and comments.list cost 1 unit each, and search.list costs 100. A quotaExceeded error stops the run cleanly; rows already delivered are kept, and the failed call is free.
• Only public data the API returns for an API key: no private or unlisted-by-ID-only details, no dislike counts (removed by YouTube), no revenue, no watch time, and no subscriber lists. Channels that hide their subscriber count give subscriberCount: null.
• Like counts that the creator hides come back as null. Counts are YouTube's own; subscriber counts are rounded by YouTube to 3 significant figures.
• Free rows (type error) cover invalid inputs, videos and channels that are not found, private or deleted, and videos with comments disabled.
• You must refresh or delete stored API data within 30 days (YouTube Developer Policies III.E.4). We keep nothing after the run.
• The run's spend limit is respected: each page of rows is charged before it is delivered, and the run stops cleanly at the cap.
• Search returns at most about 500 results per query (a YouTube limit), and results can differ from what youtube.com shows in a browser. isShort is a heuristic (3 minutes or less and not live), because the API does not flag Shorts.

FAQ

Use it from code

Run the actor through the Apify API with the input above.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~youtube-api-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"apiKey": "AIzaSy...your-own-key", "mode": "videos", "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", "https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw", "9bZkp7q19f0"]}'

JavaScript (Node.js)

// Node.js 18+ (built-in fetch). Set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment.
const input = {
  "apiKey": "AIzaSy...your-own-key",
  "mode": "videos",
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "9bZkp7q19f0"
  ]
};

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~youtube-api-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items",
  {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.APIFY_TOKEN}`,
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify(input),
  }
);
const items = await res.json();
console.log(items.length, items[0]);

Python

# pip install apify-client   (set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment)
import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run_input = {
    "apiKey": "AIzaSy...your-own-key",
    "mode": "videos",
    "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
        "https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw",
        "9bZkp7q19f0"
    ]
}

run = client.actor("actor-forge/youtube-api-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

The run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint waits for the run (up to 5 minutes) and returns the dataset rows directly. For longer runs, start the run asynchronously and read the dataset when it finishes, as the Python example does. Replace APIFY_TOKEN with your own token from the Apify console.

Step-by-step guides

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