YouTube Shorts & Video Scraper

An Apify actor that uses the official YouTube Data API v3 to fetch structured data from YouTube channels and videos. It provides reliable, API-based access to metadata without browser automation.

Overview

This actor scrapes public YouTube data via the sanctioned API. You provide a channel identifier and your API key; it returns detailed channel information and a list of videos. It's designed for developers who need clean, structured data for analysis, monitoring, or archiving.

Key Features

• Official API: Uses YouTube Data API v3, avoiding blocks associated with unofficial scraping.
• Comprehensive Data: Extracts extensive metadata for both channels and individual videos.
• Filtering & Sorting: Filter results to show only Shorts, only long-form videos, or all content. Sort by newest, oldest, or most popular.
• Efficient: Direct API calls are fast and don't consume the overhead of a full browser.
• Free Tier Friendly: The default API quota allows for scraping thousands of videos per day.

How to Use

1. Get a YouTube API Key

You need a free API key from Google Cloud.
1. Go to the Google Cloud Console.
2. Create a project and enable the YouTube Data API v3.
3. Navigate to Credentials and create an API Key.
4. (Recommended) Restrict the key to the YouTube Data API v3 for security.

2. Run the Actor

Configure the actor with input like this:

{
  "youtube_api_key": "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE",
  "channel": "@MrBeast",
  "content_type": "all",
  "max_results": 50,
  "sort_by": "newest"
}

Input Parameters

Accepted channel formats:
* Handle: @MrBeast or MrBeast
* Channel URL: https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast
* Channel ID URL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA
* Custom URL: https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBeast6000
* Direct Channel ID: UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA

Output

The actor returns a JSON object containing a success flag, detailed channel metadata, and an array of videos.

Channel data includes: ID, title, handle, description, subscriber count, total views, thumbnails, and country.
Video data includes: ID, title, description, URL, view/like/comment counts, duration, upload date, thumbnails, tags, category, and an engagement rate calculation.

Example snippet:

{
  "success": true,
  "channel": {
    "channel_id": "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
    "title": "MrBeast",
    "handle": "@mrbeast",
    "statistics": {
      "subscriber_count": 234000000,
      "video_count": 741
    }
  },
  "videos": [
    {
      "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
      "title": "My Awesome Video",
      "view_count": 15000000,
      "like_count": 850000,
      "comment_count": 12000,
      "engagement_rate": 5.73
    }
  ]
}

Find the actor on Apify: YouTube Shorts & Video Scraper