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YouTube Scraper: Best Apify Actors for Video Data, Comments & Transcripts (2026)

· 4 min read
Yassine El Haddad
Yassine El Haddad
Software Developer & Automation Specialist

I build production AI agents, web scrapers, and automation pipelines. Most of what I publish here comes from the actual problems they run into: proxies that get banned, anti-bot stacks that fingerprint your client, RAG that drifts when the underlying data moves. Stack: Python, TypeScript, Go, FastAPI, LangChain, Crawlee, Playwright, deployed on AWS, GCP, and Cloudflare.

A YouTube scraper pulls public video and channel data from the site (metadata, comments, Shorts, transcripts) without relying only on the official API. Below are leading tools in Apify’s YouTube Scrapers collection — built to ease rigid quota limits for research and automation at scale.

Video SEO and audience research require massive datasets that the official YouTube API actively restricts via strict rate limits. The Apify Store hosts scraper actors that safely navigate YouTube's frontend using browser emulation, so you can extract large volumes of public data within your compute budget.

Top Actors in This Collection​

1. YouTube Scraper — 57K users · 4.7 ⭐ · $2.40/1,000 videos​

A full-featured YouTube tool on Apify. Scrape videos, entire channel grids, playlists, and SERP results. Bypasses YouTube's 10,000-unit daily quota automatically without requiring API keys. Try YouTube Scraper on Apify →

2. YouTube Shorts Scraper — 5K users · 4.5 ⭐ · $2/1,000 shorts​

Focus entirely on vertical video. Extract the infinite-scroll YouTube Shorts feed to pull view counts, audio tracks, creator data, and engagement stats to monitor short-form trends. Try YouTube Shorts Scraper on Apify →

3. YouTube Video Downloader — 6K users · 4.3 ⭐ · $1/1,000 downloads​

A dedicated media extractor. Input video URLs and this actor returns direct backend download links for high-definition MP4 files and raw audio tracks for offline processing or AI transcription. Try YouTube Video Downloader on Apify →

4. YouTube Video Scraper by Hashtag — 404 users · 5.0 ⭐ · $2/1,000 videos​

Rated a perfect 5.0 ⭐. Track the virality of specific YouTube challenge tags or sponsor hashtags. Returns deep video analytics for every video participating in that hashtag trend. Try YouTube Video Scraper by Hashtag on Apify →

5. YouTube Comments Scraper​

Well suited for YouTube comment sentiment work. Scrape large comment sections to extract raw text, author handles, like counts, and nested reply chains from any video URL. Try YouTube Comments Scraper on Apify →

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Why These Tools Stand Out​

The official Google Data API restricts developers with low daily quotas (typically 10,000 units, which is consumed entirely by a few hundred complex queries). Apify's YouTube scrapers operate independently of the official API, meaning your extraction limit is bound only by your compute.

Free Credits

Apify offers $5 in free monthly credits, so you can pull channel analytics or download comments on the free tier.


Start scraping for free →

Frequently Asked Questions

No. These actors interact directly with YouTube's public web and mobile interfaces using headless browsers, completely bypassing the need for an official API key.

You can use the YouTube Video Downloader to extract the audio track, and then run an automated Whisper API pipeline to transcribe the speech into text.

Yes. By scheduling the main YouTube Scraper to run on a daily cron job targeting a specific channel URL, you can automatically log their new uploads, view trajectory, and engagement rates.