Compare, YouTube

YouTube scrapers compared: what 1,000 videos really cost

Prices below were read from each Actor's public pricing on Apify on 2026-10-15, for each Apify plan. We make one of these tools, so we've tried to be precise about where the others are better.

• Prices as of 2026-10-15
• Free, Starter, Scale and Business plans
• Sources linked

Price per 1,000 results, by Apify plan

Add-ons on streamers/youtube-scraper, Free-plan prices: a date range for channels adds $1.30 per 1,000 videos, AI transcription is $0.048 per started minute, and AI summaries are $0.015 per minute of video. Our date filters (upload date for search terms, publishedAfter for channels) have no surcharge, and comments and dislike estimates are part of the row.

Shorts. The two Shorts rows compare like with like: one row per Short from channels' Shorts tabs (details on the Shorts scraper page). Ours also charges $0.001 per run start and $0.0003 for each channel or search it checks (and for each Shorts link that turns out private, deleted or not a Short), so a 20-Short channel pull costs $0.0273 on Free. streamers/youtube-shorts-scraper has no start or per-channel charge, and lists a separate date-filter event ($0.0013 on Free) that is charged when you filter by date; our "newer than" filter has no surcharge.

Features side by side

Feature rows come from each Actor's README on 2026-10-15.

Three jobs, priced

For plain metadata at volume, apidojo is four times cheaper than us at $0.50 per 1,000, with a 10-video minimum per query and no single-video URLs. We don't try to match that price. Our rows cost more because each one opens the video and can carry comments and a dislike estimate.

Creator lists

The YouTube Scraper also finds creators: findCreators takes a topic and returns one row per channel, filtered by subscribers, country and recent activity, with every About-page link, the Instagram and TikTok usernames and any email the creator published. That is $0.0020 per channel. The Actors sold as YouTube email scrapers price per result or per email found, from $0.0050 to $0.12 on 2026-10-15, and some sell the business email YouTube hides behind a sign-in, which ours never returns.

The official YouTube Data API

Google's API is free within its default quota: 100 search.list calls a day in their own bucket, plus 10,000 units a day for other reads, most at 1 unit per call (Google's quota page, last updated 2026-09-15). So you get about 100 searches a day plus plenty of statistics lookups. If that's enough, it's the best option: official, stable and free. The API alternative page maps each API call to the matching input here.

Which one should you pick?

• Yugenox if you want comments alongside videos, dislike estimates, a channel by its plain name, or one flat price on the Free and Starter plans.
• streamers/youtube-scraper if you need transcripts or subtitles. It also has by far the most users and the longest track record.
• apidojo/youtube-scraper if you need the lowest price for basic video metadata at high volume.
• A Shorts Actor (ours or streamers') if you want Shorts from channels' Shorts tabs; the Shorts page compares the two.
• The official API if you fit inside the quota, need owner-only data or need to write to YouTube.

Our YouTube Scraper is newer than the other video scrapers here, and our Shorts Actor is newer still. Before you rely on it for production, check the run success figures on its Store page and try a small run.

Sources

• Prices: the public Apify API (api.apify.com/v2/acts/<actor>, field pricingInfos) on 2026-10-15, for streamers/youtube-scraper, streamers/youtube-comments-scraper, streamers/youtube-channel-scraper, apidojo/youtube-scraper, streamers/youtube-shorts-scraper, yugenox/youtube-scraper and yugenox/youtube-shorts-scraper.
• Quota: Google's YouTube Data API quota calculator.
• Dislike estimates: returnyoutubedislike.com.

Spot a mistake or a price change? Open an issue on the Issues tab and we'll correct the page.

Run it from code

100 search results with 20 top comments and a dislike estimate each: 100 rows, $0.20.

// Save as run.mjs, then: npm i apify-client && APIFY_TOKEN=... node run.mjs
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

const run = await client.actor('yugenox/youtube-scraper').call({
  searchTerms: [
    "mechanical keyboard review"
  ],
  maxItems: 100,
  maxComments: 20,
  includeDislikes: true
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const item of items) console.log(item.title, item.likes, item.dislikes);

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient  # pip install apify-client

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])

run = client.actor("yugenox/youtube-scraper").call(run_input={
    "searchTerms": ["mechanical keyboard review"],
    "maxItems": 100,
    "maxComments": 20,
    "includeDislikes": True,
})
if run is None:
    raise RuntimeError("Run did not finish")

for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item.get("title"), item.get("likes"), item.get("dislikes"))

# Small jobs: runs the Actor and returns the rows in one call (up to 5 minutes).
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/yugenox~youtube-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchTerms":["mechanical keyboard review"],"maxItems":100,"maxComments":20,"includeDislikes":true}'

Last updated 2026-10-06.