Youtube Metadata Scraper

by scrapio

Extract titles, views, likes, tags & more from any YouTube video. Perfect for SEO research, competitor analysis, and building video datasets.

17 runs

2 users

Try This Actor

Opens on Apify.com

About Youtube Metadata Scraper

Need to pull structured data from YouTube videos without the headache? This YouTube Metadata Scraper is what I use. It grabs the full details from any video URL: the title, description, and tags for SEO, plus the view count, likes, publish date, and video duration. It also pulls in the channel info, category, and thumbnail URLs. It’s straightforward—you give it links, and it gives you clean, organized data, usually as JSON or a spreadsheet. I rely on it for a few key things. For SEO and content research, seeing what tags and descriptions competitors use is invaluable. If you're tracking a channel or a trending topic over time, automating this data collection saves hours of manual work. It's also perfect for building datasets for analysis, like studying what makes a video go viral. You can run it for a single video or scale it up to process thousands. It just works, letting you focus on the insights instead of the data gathering.

What does this actor do?

Youtube Metadata Scraper is a web scraping and automation tool available on the Apify platform. It's designed to help you extract data and automate tasks efficiently in the cloud.

Key Features

Cloud-based execution - no local setup required
Scalable infrastructure for large-scale operations
API access for integration with your applications
Built-in proxy rotation and anti-blocking measures
Scheduled runs and webhooks for automation

How to Use

Click "Try This Actor" to open it on Apify
Create a free Apify account if you don't have one
Configure the input parameters as needed
Run the actor and download your results

Documentation

YouTube Metadata Scraper

Extract structured metadata from public YouTube videos. This actor retrieves titles, descriptions, stats, uploader info, and subtitles from video URLs, outputting clean data for analysis or integration.

Categories: LEAD_GENERATION, SOCIAL_MEDIA, VIDEOS

Overview

The YouTube Metadata Scraper fetches publicly available data from YouTube videos. Input one or multiple video URLs, and the actor returns a structured dataset including core metadata, engagement statistics, and optional transcripts. It's useful for data analysis, content research, and competitive monitoring, and can be integrated via the Apify API or SDKs.

Key Features

Comprehensive Data Extraction: Gets titles, descriptions, tags, view/like/comment counts, upload dates, durations, and uploader channel details.
Transcript & Subtitle Capture: Extracts available subtitles and transcripts, including timestamped segments and support for multiple languages.
Batch Processing: Accepts up to 1,000 YouTube video URLs (including Shorts) in a single run.
Developer Integration: Ready for automation via the Apify API or Python/JavaScript SDKs. An alternative to manual youtube-metadata Python scripts.
Flexible Export: Outputs data in JSON, CSV, or Excel formats.
Free Tier: Available to try on Apify's free starter plan.

How to Use

Get Access: Sign up for a free account on Apify.
Find the Actor: Go to the actor's page: YouTube Metadata Scraper.
Configure Input: In the actor's input interface, paste your YouTube video URLs (one per line).
Set Options: Choose to enable transcript extraction, select your preferred output format, and configure any other optional settings.
Run: Click "Start" to launch the scrape. Processing typically takes seconds.
Get Results: Download your dataset from the dataset tab in your preferred format (JSON, CSV, Excel) once the run is complete.

Input/Output

Input

The primary input is a list of YouTube video URLs. You provide these via the actor's input field, which accepts a JSON object or the built-in form.

Example input configuration:

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID_1",
    "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID_2"
  ],
  "includeTranscript": true
}

Output

The actor outputs a structured dataset where each item contains the metadata for one video. Key output fields include:

Field	Description
`videoId`	Unique YouTube video identifier.
`title`	The video's title.
`description`	Full video description text.
`viewCount`, `likeCount`, `commentCount`	Engagement metrics.
`uploadDate`	Date the video was published.
`duration`	Video length in seconds.
`uploaderName`, `uploaderUrl`	Channel name and URL.
`channelSubscribers`	Approximate subscriber count.
`tags`	Array of video tags/keywords.
`subtitles`	Array of transcript segments (if enabled).
`thumbnailUrl`	URL to the video's thumbnail image.