YouTube Channel Scraper

Scrapes YouTube channels to extract structured data about the channel and its videos. Outputs clean JSON for easy integration and analysis.

Overview

This Apify actor takes YouTube channel URLs or IDs as input and returns detailed metadata. It collects channel information (name, handle, description, subscriber count, social links) and data for each video (title, URL, views, likes, comments, thumbnail, duration). It's built to handle multiple channels in a single run and is proxy-aware to manage request limits.

Key Features

• Structured Data: Outputs one JSON object per video, including both channel-level and video-level details.
• Bulk Scraping: Process multiple channel URLs simultaneously.
• Configurable Depth: Use maxVideos to limit the number of videos scraped per channel.
• Proxy Support: Works with no proxy, Apify Proxy (recommended for stability), or custom proxy configurations to avoid blocks.

How to Use

Configure the actor run via a JSON input object. The only required parameter is startUrls.

Basic Input Example

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@sikhunsura"
  ],
  "maxVideos": 50,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Input Parameters

• startUrls (required): An array of YouTube channel URLs (e.g., youtube.com/@handle) or channel IDs.
• maxVideos (optional): An integer to limit videos scraped per channel. Scrapes all available videos if not set.
• proxyConfiguration (optional): Controls proxy usage.
  • useApifyProxy: Set to true to use Apify Proxy (recommended). Set to false for no proxy (risk of rate limits).
  • apifyProxyGroups: Specify groups like ["RESIDENTIAL"] or ["DATACENTER"].

Input/Output

Input

Provide channel URLs in the startUrls array. For a quick, small test, you can run without a proxy.

{
  "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@ExampleChannel"],
  "maxVideos": 5,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": false }
}

Output

The actor outputs a dataset of items, where each item is a JSON object representing a scraped video. Each object contains the full channel details and the specific video's metadata.

Example Output Item:

{
  "inputChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@sikhunsura",
  "type": "channel",
  "channelId": "UC_FkTgeTJoo7zgjjebC2ElQ",
  "channelName": "Sikhun Surah - Holy Quran",
  "channelHandle": "@youtube",
  "channelDescription": "We, Sikhun Surah (শিখুন সূরা ), record relaxing, healing and soothing Quran recitation...",
  "channelSubscribers": "1.23M",
  "socialLinks": {
    "facebook": "https://facebook.com/...",
    "instagram": "https://instagram.com/..."
  },
  "videoTitle": "Surah Al-Fatiha | Beautiful Recitation",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyz123",
  "videoPublishDate": "2024-01-15",
  "videoViews": 150000,
  "videoLikes": 12000,
  "videoComments": 850,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xyz123/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "duration": "05:42"
}