YouTube Video Data Extractor

Extract structured metadata from YouTube channels, playlists, or individual videos. Built by Sandalia Apps.

Overview

This actor scrapes YouTube to collect video data without requiring an official API key. You can input channel handles (e.g., @handle), video URLs, or playlist links. It returns structured data in JSON, CSV, or Excel formats, suitable for analysis, automation, or integration into other systems.

Key Features

• No API Key Required: Scrapes data directly from YouTube, avoiding API quotas and rate limits.
• Flexible Input Sources: Accepts YouTube channel handles, video URLs, and playlist links.
• Structured Metadata Extraction: Captures comprehensive data for each video, including:
  • Title, description, tags, and duration.
  • Upload date and publish timestamp.
  • View count, likes, and comment count.
  • Channel name and channel ID.
  • Thumbnail and video URLs.
  • Video category, language, and caption availability.
• Scalable Execution: Can process hundreds of URLs in a single run.
• Integration Ready: Supports scheduling, webhooks, and API calls for automation.

How to Use

Configure the actor run with the following input parameters:

1. channel (Boolean): Set to true to extract data from a list of channel handles (e.g., @YouTube). Set to false to extract data from a list of direct video URLs. Default is true.
2. Channel or Video URLs: Provide one or more YouTube URLs based on the channel setting.
   • For channels: Use the channel's handle URL (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/@YouTube).
   • For videos: Use standard watch URLs (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...).
3. maxItems (Integer): Only relevant when channel is true. Limits the number of videos scraped from each channel. Default is 5.
4. Proxy Configuration: It is highly recommended to use Datacenter or Residential proxies. Requests sent directly from Apify servers have a high chance of being blocked by YouTube.

After the run completes, download the dataset in your preferred format (JSON, CSV, Excel).

Input/Output

Input: A list of YouTube URLs—either channel handles, video links, or playlist links.

Output: A structured array of objects. Each object contains the metadata for one video.

[
  {
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=example123",
    "title": "Video Title Here",
    "description": "Full video description...",
    "uploadDate": "2023-10-26",
    "viewCount": "15042",
    "likeCount": "1050",
    "commentCount": "89",
    "channelName": "Channel Name",
    "channelId": "UCxxxxxx",
    "duration": "15:30",
    "category": "Education",
    "tags": ["python", "tutorial", "coding"]
  }
]