YouTube Search Results by Keyword — Ranked Videos With Full Stats

What it does

Seeing what ranks on YouTube for a keyword usually means searching by hand and copying titles, with no view counts or durations in view. This actor runs YouTube search by keyword through the official YouTube Data API v3 using your own free key, and returns one row per result in YouTube's search order, with searchRank recorded for each.

Search results on their own only carry basic snippet data, so every result is enriched with a videos.list lookup: title, description, channel, published date, duration in seconds, views, likes, comment count, tags, category, default language, thumbnails, live status, made-for-kids flag and a Shorts flag. You can apply YouTube's own filters: order (relevance, date, view count, rating or title), publishedAfter and publishedBefore, regionCode, relevanceLanguage and videoDuration. Setting searchType to channel returns channel rows instead.

It is aimed at YouTube keyword research, trend and competitor tracking, influencer discovery and content gap analysis. Results cost $0.30 per 1,000 plus $0.002 per page of 50, roughly $0.34 per 1,000 all in.

How it works

1. Each query in searchQueries is sent to search.list with your filters, 50 results per page, up to maxResultsPerQuery.
2. The video IDs on each page are looked up with videos.list so every row carries full stats, duration and tags.
3. Rows keep the query and the result's rank, and duplicates across queries are removed.
4. The run log shows a quota estimate before any call; each page costs 100 search units plus 1 for the video details.
5. Search pages that return no rows are not charged, and a quotaExceeded error stops the run cleanly with the rows already delivered.

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": "search",
  "searchQueries": [
    "web scraping tutorial",
    "python requests tutorial"
  ],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 100,
  "order": "viewCount",
  "publishedAfter": "2026-01-01",
  "regionCode": "US",
  "relevanceLanguage": "en",
  "videoDuration": "medium"
}

Output example

Each result row records the query and its rank alongside the video's stats, as in these results for one keyword:

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

Search is the most quota-hungry API call, so a free key tops out at about 5,000 results a day; if you need far more volume and do not mind page scraping, a no-key scraper has no quota ceiling. Results also differ slightly from what a logged-in user sees, because the API has no personalisation and no ads.

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.
• Search is quota-hungry: each search.list page of up to 50 results costs 100 of your 10,000 free daily units (plus 1 unit for the video details), so one free key gives about 5,000 search results a day (about 100 pages). Quota resets at midnight Pacific Time. A quotaExceeded error stops the run cleanly; rows already delivered are kept, and the failed call is free.
• About 500 results per query at most. That is YouTube's own cap on search depth, so maxResultsPerQuery goes up to 500. For more coverage, split a topic into several narrower queries or date ranges.
• Results and their order are YouTube's own search ranking for an API request (no personalisation, no ads). Results may differ slightly from what a logged-in user sees on youtube.com.
• Like counts that the creator hides come back as null. There are no dislike counts (removed by YouTube), no revenue and no watch time.
• isShort is a heuristic (3 minutes or less and not live), because the API does not flag Shorts. Use the video length filter short to get only videos under 4 minutes.
• Free rows (type error) cover failed queries and invalid inputs. Search pages that return no rows are not charged.
• 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.

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-search-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"apiKey": "AIzaSy...your-own-key", "mode": "search", "searchQueries": ["web scraping tutorial", "python requests tutorial"], "maxResultsPerQuery": 100, "order": "viewCount", "publishedAfter": "2026-01-01", "regionCode": "US", "relevanceLanguage": "en", "videoDuration": "medium"}'

JavaScript (Node.js)

// Node.js 18+ (built-in fetch). Set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment.
const input = {
  "apiKey": "AIzaSy...your-own-key",
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQueries": [
    "web scraping tutorial",
    "python requests tutorial"
  ],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 100,
  "order": "viewCount",
  "publishedAfter": "2026-01-01",
  "regionCode": "US",
  "relevanceLanguage": "en",
  "videoDuration": "medium"
};

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~youtube-search-api/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": "search",
    "searchQueries": [
        "web scraping tutorial",
        "python requests tutorial"
    ],
    "maxResultsPerQuery": 100,
    "order": "viewCount",
    "publishedAfter": "2026-01-01",
    "regionCode": "US",
    "relevanceLanguage": "en",
    "videoDuration": "medium"
}

run = client.actor("actor-forge/youtube-search-api").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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