Apify YouTube Scraper: No API Quota, No Code
Quick Answer
Use YouTube Scraper (streamers/youtube-scraper). It charges $4.00/1,000 videos subject to change · verified 2026-09-10 on the free plan and $3.00/1,000 videos subject to change · verified 2026-09-10 on Starter. Paste video, channel, playlist, or search inputs, run it, then export JSON or CSV. No YouTube Data API key, so no Google daily quota.
Scraping comments instead? YouTube Comments Scraper is $2.00/1,000 comments subject to change · verified 2026-09-10 on the free plan. Every rate on this page is in the Pricing table below.
You need an Apify account. The free plan includes $5 of monthly credit, which is about 1,250 videos at the free-plan rate, so a validation run costs nothing out of pocket. For a side-by-side of every Actor here plus rivals, see our YouTube scraper comparison, or browse YouTube scrapers in the Apify Store.
Updated 2026-09-10: all five Actors below re-verified live against api.apify.com today. YouTube Scraper has 113,000+ users and a 4.8/5 rating from 195 reviews, and has run on pay-per-event pricing since 2025-11-07, most recently re-rated 2026-09-02.
Data you can extract
| Data | Typical source Actor | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Title, description, URL | YouTube Scraper | Core metadata for catalogs |
| Views, likes, duration, date | YouTube Scraper | Engagement and scheduling analysis |
| Channel name, URL, subscribers | YouTube Scraper / Fast YouTube Channel Scraper | Channel Scraper is cheaper per video when channels are the unit of work |
| Comment threads | YouTube Comments Scraper | Sentiment, support themes, moderation samples |
| Captions / transcripts | YouTube Transcript Scraper Pro, or the transcript add-on inside YouTube Scraper | NLP, RAG, summarization; AI fallback when captions are unavailable |
Field names vary by Actor version, so always inspect a 10-item test dataset before building ETL.
Step-by-step: YouTube Scraper (videos + metadata)
- Open YouTube Scraper → run console.
- Provide search queries, channel URLs, playlist URLs, or video URLs (see the live input schema for the exact section names).
- Set a low max items for the first run (e.g. 10–25).
- Enable subtitles / transcripts only if you need the text. This Actor bills them as a separate add-on event, $0.048/started minute of video subject to change · verified 2026-09-10 on the free plan, which dominates the bill on long videos.
- Click Start, wait for SUCCEEDED, then export from Output / Storage.
Configuration options to expect
- Mode: search vs direct URLs vs channel/playlist crawl (depends on Actor).
- Max results: primary cost lever. Every video written to the dataset is one billed event.
- Language / region: when the schema exposes filters.
- Date range on channels: billed as its own add-on event, $0.0013/video subject to change · verified 2026-09-10 on the free plan on top of the base rate.
- Subtitles: the paid transcript add-on above, or a separate transcript Actor if you want captions without the video metadata.
Comments and channels
- Comments: YouTube Comments Scraper passes video URLs and exports text, authors, likes, timestamps (field set per Store listing). 23,000+ users, 4.9/5 from 43 reviews.
- Channel-centric pulls: Fast YouTube Channel Scraper, useful when you want channel-level exports without hand-assembling video lists. At $1.30/1,000 videos subject to change · verified 2026-09-10 on the free plan it is roughly a third the cost of YouTube Scraper, so use it when a channel's video list is all you need.
Sample output (video metadata)
| Field | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| title | Video title | Build a full-stack app in 10 minutes |
| url | Watch URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123xyz |
| viewCount | Views | 1452830 |
| likes | Likes | 48200 |
| duration | ISO 8601 duration | PT12M34S |
| date | Upload date | 2024-02-18 |
| channelName | Channel title | Fireship |
| channelUrl | Channel URL | https://www.youtube.com/@Fireship |
| subscribers | Subscriber count (when exposed) | 3120000 |
| description | Full description text | In this video we... |
| commentsCount | Comment counter on page | 2145 |
Illustrative JSON; your Actor may add or rename fields between releases.
{
"title": "Building a Full-Stack App in 10 Minutes",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123xyz",
"viewCount": 1452830,
"likes": 48200,
"duration": "PT12M34S",
"date": "2024-02-18",
"channelName": "Fireship",
"channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@Fireship",
"subscribers": 3120000,
"description": "In this video, I build a complete full-stack application from scratch using the latest web technologies.",
"commentsCount": 2145,
"thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/abc123xyz/maxresdefault.jpg",
"tags": ["web development", "full stack", "tutorial", "javascript"]
}
Use cases
- Content research: benchmark titles, lengths, and upload cadence in a niche.
- Competitor analysis: track public view trajectories and publishing frequency for rival channels.
- Comment sentiment: export threads for classification or manual review (public comments only).
- Transcripts for models: feed YouTube Transcript Scraper Pro output into RAG or fine-tuning pipelines. The
transcript_llmfield strips[Music],(laughter), and filler tokens before you ingest. It charges $1.00/1,000 transcripts subject to change · verified 2026-09-10 on the free plan when native captions exist, and only falls back to paid AI transcription when they do not.
Video downloads (optional)
Some teams search for a YouTube video downloader. Apify hosts third-party download Actors such as Youtube Video Downloader, which returns MP4 links and bills by video second at a flat rate on every plan: $0.00015/second at 360p subject to change · verified 2026-09-10 up to $0.0012/second at 2160p subject to change · verified 2026-09-10. A 10-minute 1080p download works out to about $0.45. Downloading can violate YouTube’s Terms, so use it only for content you own, have licensed, or are explicitly allowed to fetch.
Scrape public data, respect robots.txt where applicable, and review YouTube’s Terms and your jurisdiction’s rules. Not legal advice; see scraping legality.
Pricing
All five Actors on this page run pay-per-event, read from api.apify.com on 2026-09-10. You are billed per result, not per compute unit, so the item count is your budget.
| Actor | Billed unit | Free plan | Starter ($19/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube Scraper | Video written to dataset | $4.00 / 1,000 | $3.00 / 1,000 |
| YouTube Comments Scraper | Comment returned | $2.00 / 1,000 | $1.50 / 1,000 |
| Fast YouTube Channel Scraper | Video in default dataset | $1.30 / 1,000 | $1.00 / 1,000 |
| YouTube Transcript Scraper Pro | Transcript retrieved | $1.00 / 1,000 | $0.90 / 1,000 |
| Youtube Video Downloader | Second of video, 360p | $0.15 / 1,000 sec | same (flat rate) |
Add-ons on YouTube Scraper are charged on top of the base rate, at free-plan prices: transcript $0.048 per started minute of video, AI summary or AI timestamped description $0.015 per minute each, channel date filtering $0.0013 per video. Transcript Scraper Pro adds a one-time $0.0025 Actor-start event per GB of memory, plus $0.012 per minute when AI fallback actually runs. The transcript add-on is the one that reorders a budget: 100 ten-minute videos with transcripts is roughly $48 of add-on against $0.40 of base rate.
Two things to know before you scale. The Store page for YouTube Scraper advertises "$2.40 / 1,000 videos", which is the Gold enterprise tier, not a rate a self-serve plan can buy; the free and Starter numbers above are what you will actually pay. And YouTube Comments Scraper sets a $0.50 floor on the per-run maximum-charge cap, which limits how low you can set that safety cap, not what a run costs.
No. Apify YouTube Actors scrape public web surfaces, so you are not consuming Google’s daily API quota. You pay Apify platform and Actor usage instead.
Typically video titles, URLs, views, likes, duration, upload dates, channel names, channel URLs, subscriber counts when shown, descriptions, thumbnails, and comment counts. Exact fields depend on the Actor version, so run a small test.
Use the YouTube Comments Scraper with a list of video URLs. It returns thread text and engagement fields suitable for sentiment or support analysis.
Native captions mirror what YouTube provides: manual captions are exact; auto-generated ones can miss jargon or fast speech. When a video has no captions, use the YouTube Transcript Scraper Pro Actor with AI fallback enabled so the built-in Whisper model transcribes the audio. Check the is_ai_generated flag on each result item and the language_probability score (0–1) to assess confidence. For quality-critical work, treat AI transcripts as a first draft.
Depends on use case, region, and whether data includes personal information. This is not legal advice; review YouTube’s Terms and our legality guide.
YouTube Scraper charges $4.00 per 1,000 videos on the free plan and $3.00 per 1,000 on Starter ($19/month), verified against api.apify.com on 2026-09-10. Comments are $2.00 per 1,000 on the free plan, channel-only pulls $1.30 per 1,000, transcripts $1.00 per 1,000. The free plan's $5 monthly credit covers roughly 1,250 videos. Transcript and AI add-ons on YouTube Scraper are billed per minute of video on top and can exceed the base rate several times over.
Some Store Actors return download links. You must have rights to the video; unauthorized downloading may violate YouTube’s Terms.
Common mistakes and fixes
Clicking Start does nothing.
Fill required inputs, ensure at least one valid URL or query, and read validation errors in the run log.
Run finishes with an empty dataset.
Use public URLs, remove overly tight filters, and test with one known-good video or channel first.
Runs are slow or flaky.
Lower concurrency and batch size; avoid mixing unrelated input types in a single huge run.