YouTube Video Scraper (PPE)

Overview

This actor scrapes detailed metadata from YouTube videos and channels. Provide video or channel URLs, and it returns structured data including views, likes, tags, upload dates, and more. It's built for automation, allowing you to collect data at scale for analysis, benchmarking, or tracking.

Key Features

• Target Flexibility: Scrape individual videos or bulk content from entire channels.
• Detailed Metadata: Extract ~20 distinct data properties per video (e.g., title, description, view count, engagement metrics).
• Channel Data Enrichment: Optionally include ~25+ additional properties about the video's channel (e.g., subscriber count, channel description).
• Granular Billing: You are billed only for the data elements you choose to extract.
• Simple Setup: Configure with just a few parameters in the Apify Console.

How to Use

Configure the actor's input in the Apify Console. The core steps are:

1. Enter Target URLs: Provide a list of YouTube URLs.

   • Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID - Scrapes one specific video.
   • Channel URL: https://www.youtube.com/@CHANNEL_HANDLE or https://www.youtube.com/channel/CHANNEL_ID - Scrapes multiple videos from the channel.

2. Set a Video Crawl Limit (for channel URLs): Define maxChannelVideos to control how many recent videos to scrape from each channel. This is required when using channel URLs.

3. Enable Channel Metadata (Optional): Toggle the setting to include detailed channel information in the results for each video.

4. Launch: Run the actor. Results will be available in the Apify dataset, typically as structured JSON.

Input/Output

Input (Configure via Apify Console):
* urls: (Required) An array of YouTube video or channel page URLs.
* maxChannelVideos: (Required for channels) The maximum number of videos to scrape from each provided channel URL.
* includeChannelMetadata: (Optional) Boolean to enrich video data with full channel details.

Output:
The actor outputs an array of items, where each item represents a scraped video. The dataset includes fields such as:
* url, id, title, description
* viewCount, likeCount, commentCount
* uploadDate, duration, keywords
* channelId, channelTitle
* (If enabled) Nested channel object with subscriberCount, description, viewCount, etc.

Results are delivered in the Apify Console and can be exported to JSON, CSV, or accessed via API.