YouTube Scraper Fast

A high-performance actor for extracting YouTube video metadata. It's optimized for speed and reliability, scraping data 4-5x faster than traditional methods without requiring a residential proxy.

Overview

This scraper is built for developers who need fast, reliable YouTube data for content research, SEO analysis, or trend monitoring. It focuses on extracting 12 essential video fields with 95-100% reliability. Performance is a key differentiator: it processes videos in ~1.5-2 seconds each, achieving a throughput of 40-50 videos per minute.

Best for: Content research, SEO analysis, competitive intelligence, trend monitoring, and influencer discovery.

Key Features

• Speed: Processes videos in ~1.5-2 seconds each (4-5x faster than traditional scrapers).
• No Proxy Required: Works reliably without a residential proxy, keeping costs at $0 for most use cases. Proxy usage is optional for high-volume runs.
• Optimized Output: Extracts 12 essential fields (like videoId, title, channel, views, upload date) with multiple DOM fallbacks for high reliability.
• Smart Rate Limiting: Uses error-based exponential backoff, introducing zero artificial delays when scraping runs smoothly.
• Flexible Inputs: Accepts search keywords, direct video/channel/playlist URLs, and bulk uploads via text file.
• Localization: Supports country (regionCode) and language (language) parameters for geo-specific results.

How to Use

Configure the actor using input parameters. The two primary ways to run it are via Search Keywords or Direct YouTube URLs.

Basic Input Parameters

Usage Examples

1. Searching by Keyword:

{
  "searchQueries": ["web scraping tutorial", "data analysis python"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 25,
  "regionCode": "GB"
}

2. Scraping Specific URLs:
Provide an array of URLs to the startUrls field.

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@SomeChannel/videos"
  ]
}

For bulk URL processing, you can upload a text file (one URL per line) or provide a link to a remote file.

Important Notes:
* Date filtering (dateFrom, dateTo) only works with Search Keywords, not with Direct URLs.
* The proxy is optional. The scraper is designed to work reliably without it.

Input/Output

Input

The actor is configured via the input schema detailed above. Core inputs are searchQueries for discovery and startUrls for targeted scraping.

Output

The dataset contains items, each representing one video, with the following 12 core fields:

The output is available in JSON, CSV, XML, Excel, and HTML formats via the Apify platform.