Irfan Ali
$cd /actors
actors/youtube-search-scraper

datacortex/youtube-search-scraper

YouTube Search Scraper

Search YouTube and export title, URL, channel, views, duration, thumbnail, and publish time.

Run on Apify

When to use it

Use this when the unit of work is a search term: rank tracking, content research, or a list of videos matching a query. Standard search returns up to 20 rows per query; deep search goes up to 700.

Versus the sibling Actors

Search returns what YouTube shows on the results page. For likes, description, and a real upload date, look up those video IDs with YouTube Metadata Scraper. For a channel’s recent uploads, use YouTube Channel Scraper.

Example input

{
  "queries": [
    "how to make a website"
  ],
  "deep": false,
  "maxResults": 20,
  "sortBy": "relevance"
}

Example output

{
  "title": "How to Make a Website in 10 Minutes",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK9XuImr8Xg",
  "videoId": "LK9XuImr8Xg",
  "views": 1200000,
  "duration": "10:32"
}

MCP pin

Agents call this through Apify MCP. Running it needs an Apify token.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=datacortex/youtube-search-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Pricing

$0.50 per 1,000 results + $0.001 per run. Confirm on the Apify pricing tab if you are budgeting a large run.

Limitations

  • Does not download video files, transcripts, or comments.
  • View counts and “published X ago” are search-page values, not live analytics.

Related Actors

Built and maintained by Irfan Ali, senior AI engineer. Open to senior AI IC roles — Bengaluru or remote. Get in touch.