YouTube Search Scraper

Scrapes YouTube search results for videos, channels, playlists, movies, shows, and Shorts. It supports advanced filtering and sorting to extract structured data for analysis and automation.

Key Features

• Multi-type search: Retrieve videos, channels, playlists, movies, shows, or Shorts.
• Advanced filtering: Filter by duration, upload date, and features (HD, subtitles, 4K, etc.).
• Sorting options: Order results by relevance, rating, upload date, or view count.
• Geographic & language targeting: Specify country (geo) and language (lang) for localized results.
• Pagination: Automatically paginates to collect results; use resumeToken to continue interrupted runs.
• Structured output: Returns clean JSON objects for each result type.

How to Use

Configure the actor with an input JSON object. Only type and searchQuery are mandatory.

Basic Example

{
  "type": "search",
  "searchQuery": "cat videos",
  "searchType": "video",
  "maxItem": 50
}

Advanced Example

{
  "type": "search",
  "searchQuery": "machine learning tutorial",
  "searchType": "video",
  "sortBy": "views",
  "duration": "long",
  "uploadDate": "year",
  "features": "HD,subtitles",
  "maxItem": 100,
  "geo": "US",
  "lang": "en"
}

Input Parameters

Output

The actor outputs an array of items, where each item is a structured object based on the searchType.

Video Object

{
  "type": "video",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Never Gonna Give You Up",
  "thumbnails": [...],
  "channel": { "id": "UC...", "name": "Rick Astley", "thumbnails": [...] },
  "duration": "213",
  "viewCount": "1234567890",
  "publishedTimeText": "14 years ago",
  "badges": ["CC"]
}

Channel Object

{
  "type": "channel",
  "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
  "name": "Rick Astley",
  "handle": "@RickAstley",
  "thumbnails": [...],
  "subscriberCount": "5.2M subscribers",
  "videoCount": "234 videos",
  "description": "Official channel..."
}

Playlist Object

{
  "type": "playlist",
  "playlistId": "PLrAXtmErZgOeiKm4sgNOknGvNjby9efdf",
  "title": "Machine Learning Course",
  "channel": { "id": "UCxxx...", "name": "Stanford University" },
  "videoCount": 42,
  "thumbnails": [...]
}

Notes

• The free tier is limited to 100 results (maxItem).
• General searches may return mixed content types; use searchType for precise filtering.
• Some filters (like specific features) can reduce the total number of available results.
• For best results with YouTube Shorts, explicitly set "searchType": "shorts".