YouTube Search Scraper: Videos, Shorts and Channels

Get YouTube search results for any keyword, country and language: every video, Short, channel, playlist, movie and sponsored video, with title, URL, channel, views, duration, publish date, thumbnail, badges and position. One clean row per result.

Why this Actor

• $0.35 per 1,000 results on every Apify plan, including Free. No start fee and no speed surcharge. Apify platform usage is billed separately by Apify (usually $0.001 to $0.005 for a small run). A small page minimum applies only when a page yields fewer than 8 results (see Pricing).
• Many keywords in one run: 1 or 1,000 search terms, each with up to 700 results, all at the same per result price.
• 40 fields per result (44 with rank tracking on), including a stable id, the exact position, view count, duration in seconds, the channel's ID and URL, and whether the result is a Short, live stream, movie or sponsored video.
• Every YouTube filter: sort order, upload date, type, duration, and features such as 4K, live, subtitles and Creative Commons. You can also paste YouTube search URLs.
• Localized results: 240+ countries, a single city or region, 90+ interface languages, and desktop or mobile.
• Rank and new video tracking: turn on Compare with last run and every row says whether it is new and how many places it moved since the previous run, at no extra cost.
• Not included: like counts, comment counts and subscriber counts. They are not on the search page, so you need a separate YouTube video or channel details Actor for them; we do not offer one. Transcripts and comments are available from our separate Actors (see Not included).

One example row from a real run, shortened:

{
  "id": "89533ce039f0ef20e094",
  "position": 1,
  "positionInType": 1,
  "type": "video",
  "title": "The Complete SEO & AI SEO Course for 2026 (Full Beginner’s Guide)",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DRO4rEIHDk",
  "videoId": "7DRO4rEIHDk",
  "channelId": "UCmW0I6tx3Co4B6T2euHj6iw",
  "channelName": "Surfer Academy and Matt Kenyon",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmW0I6tx3Co4B6T2euHj6iw",
  "channelLogo": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/Bv-ZILjuT_wYllBIiy21S4bHSQqd3twvauDKxTr-AjP7TWSP29FZ2QUErta4PEAVg3hXqyYuxA=s68-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
  "description": "Learn SEO in 2026 and rank on Google + AI search (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and more). Full step-by-step tutorial + 30-day action ...",
  "highlightedWords": [
    "SEO"
  ],
  "badges": [
    "CC"
  ],
  "viewCount": 241622,
  "publishedText": "5 months ago",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-24T23:08:13.000Z",
  "duration": "50:46",
  "durationSeconds": 3046,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7DRO4rEIHDk/hq720.jpg",
  "isLive": false,
  "isShort": false,
  "isMovie": false,
  "isSponsored": false,
  "searchTerm": "seo",
  "searchUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=seo",
  "country": "US",
  "language": "en",
  "device": "desktop",
  "totalResultsEstimate": 8796486,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-28T15:52:03.307Z"
}

You pay per event, through your Apify account. Main price: $0.35 per 1,000 results on every Apify plan. Every event and plan:

Every run is one HTTP request to the Apify API with your Apify token; the input below is the actor's own example. The synchronous endpoint returns the rows in the response for runs up to 300 seconds; for longer runs start a run and fetch its dataset.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cheapapi~youtube-search-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchTerms":["lofi hip hop","how to make sourdough bread"],"maxResultsPerSearch":20,"country":"US","language":"en"}'

With the JavaScript client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('cheapapi/youtube-search-scraper').call({
  "searchTerms": [
    "lofi hip hop",
    "how to make sourdough bread"
  ],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 20,
  "country": "US",
  "language": "en"
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Typical job: 10 keywords × 100 results = 1,000 results.

Prices are the event fees from public Apify Store listings, checked September 2026. The Store data does not show whether the alternatives bill Apify platform usage on top, so the table compares event fees only. For this Actor, Apify platform usage is billed separately by Apify (at the default 256 MB a small run typically uses about $0.001 to $0.005), shown as "+ usage".

Where others are cheaper or do more:

• The cheapest per result Actor is cheaper on paid plans when each run has one keyword with more than 100 results. For example, 1 keyword × 700 results costs $0.185 there and $0.245 here. With 100 results per keyword the event fees are the same ($0.35 for the typical job); with fewer (for example 10 keywords × 20 results: $0.15 there, $0.07 here) this Actor is cheaper. On the Free plan the typical job costs $0.35 plus platform usage here, against $4.00 and $2.60.
• The all in one and flat price Actors return like counts and more video details in the same row. This Actor does not open video pages, so it returns only the search page fields and costs less than those two for the typical job ($0.35 plus platform usage, against $0.50 to $4.00).

• YouTube SEO and rank tracking: see where your videos and competitors' videos rank for your keywords in each country, and schedule the Actor to track changes over time.
• Content research: find which topics, formats (Shorts or long videos) and lengths win for a keyword, and how many views they get.
• Influencer and channel discovery: collect channels and creators that show up for niche searches.
• Ad intelligence: see which sponsored videos appear for your keywords.
• Market and trend monitoring: track new uploads for a topic with the "Upload date" filter.
• Datasets for analytics and AI: build clean, structured datasets of YouTube search results.

• At most 700 results per search (200 with Instant processing), in YouTube's order. At least 10 results are requested per search.
• publishedAt is an estimate based on YouTube's relative date text.
• Some sort options, such as rating, are sometimes ignored or reinterpreted by YouTube.
• The fields depend on what YouTube shows. For example, channels have no view count, and live streams have no duration.
• Like counts, comments, subscriber counts and transcripts are not included (see Not included).
• Compare with last run compares runs with the same search settings; changing the search term, filters, country or city, language or device starts a new history for that search.