YouTube Scraping API

Extract comprehensive YouTube video data including metadata, engagement metrics, channel information, and video chapters for content analysis and research.

🚀 Key Features

• Comprehensive Video Data - Title, description, views, likes, publish date, and more
• Channel Information - Author details, channel ID, and subscriber counts
• Video Chapters - Extract timestamped chapters with direct links
• Hashtag Extraction - Automatically extract video hashtags
• Thumbnail URLs - High-resolution thumbnail image links
• Automatic Retry Logic - Automatic retries to achieve 99%+ uptime
• URL Format Support - Both youtube.com and youtu.be short URLs
• Browser Emulation - Advanced browser fingerprinting for reliable access

📋 Endpoint

POST requests only - All YouTube scraping requests must use the POST method:

POST https://scrapingapi.qoest.com/v1/youtube

🔑 Authentication

All requests must include your API token in the Authorization header using Bearer authentication:

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN

📊 Parameters

Parameter	Required	Type	Description
url	Yes	string	YouTube video URL (supports youtube.com/watch and youtu.be formats)

URL Format Requirements

• Must start with http:// or https://
• Supports both formats:
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
  • https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID
• Video ID must contain alphanumeric characters, underscores, and hyphens only
• Examples of valid URLs:
  • https://youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
  • https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

💰 Pricing

Monthly Subscription Tiers

Plan	Price	Credits	Cost per Credit
Tier 1	$10/month	10,000 credits	$0.001
Tier 2	$50/month	55,000 credits	$0.0009
Tier 3	$100/month	115,000 credits	$0.00087
Tier 4	$500/month	600,000 credits	$0.00083
Tier 5	$1,000/month	1,250,000 credits	$0.0008

Credit Usage

Feature	Credits Required
YouTube Video Scraping	3 credits per request

Usage Examples

• Tier 1 ($10): 3,333 YouTube video scraping requests
• Tier 2 ($50): 18,333 YouTube video scraping requests
• Tier 3 ($100): 38,333 YouTube video scraping requests

📝 Examples

Extract Video Metadata

curl --location 'https://scrapingapi.qoest.com/v1/youtube' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
--data '{
    "url": "https://youtu.be/7V6U1YMgj5M"
}'

📤 Response Format

Successful Response (200)

{
    "response": {
        "title": "Qoest Reddit Scraping API",
        "description": "The Qoest Reddit Scraping API lets you scrape Reddit posts, comments, and community data with advanced search filters, time-based queries, and multiple sort options, making it perfect for social media monitoring, market research, competitor analysis, content discovery, academic studies, and sentiment analysis. With support for both direct Reddit URLs and search queries, this Reddit API provides reliable data extraction, automatic retries, and flexible parameters for developers, businesses, and researchers who need accurate Reddit scraping at scale.\n\nReddit Scraping API Documenation: https://developers.qoest.com/docs/qoe...",
        "view_count": "24 views",
        "like_count": "0",
        "publish_date": "Sep 9, 2025",
        "relative_date": "2 days ago",
        "hashtags": [],
        "chapters": [],
        "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7V6U1YMgj5M/maxresdefault.jpg",
        "author": "Sohaib Ilyas",
        "channel_id": "UCHK-8VxbXtmeSky7RGuc41Q",
        "subscriber_count": "7.32K subscribers"
    }
}

Error Responses

URL Validation Error (422)

{
  "message": "The given data was invalid.",
  "errors": {
    "url": [
      "The url field is required.",
      "The url format is invalid."
    ]
  }
}

Invalid YouTube URL (400)

{
  "message": "Invalid YouTube URL"
}

Video Data Extraction Failed (400)

{
  "message": "Failed to extract video data"
}

Scraping Failed (400)

{
  "message": "Failed to fetch YouTube data"
}

Insufficient Credits (403)

{
  "message": "You do not have enough credits to perform this action."
}

Authentication Required (401)

{
  "message": "Unauthenticated."
}

⚠️ Validation Rules

URL Requirements

• Required field: Must be a valid URL string
• YouTube domain validation: Must match YouTube URL patterns
• Video ID extraction: Automatically extracts and validates video ID
• Protocol: Must include http:// or https://
• Supported formats:
  • youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
  • youtu.be/VIDEO_ID

Video ID Requirements

• Must contain only alphanumeric characters, underscores, and hyphens
• Standard YouTube video ID length (11 characters)
• Automatically converted from short URLs to standard format

Automatic Retry Logic

• Automatic retries to achieve 99%+ uptime
• Browser rotation: Different browser fingerprints for each attempt
• Proxy support: Integrated proxy rotation for reliability
• Success criteria: Valid HTML response with extractable video data

🚨 Common Issues

• Invalid URL Format: Ensure URL follows YouTube domain patterns
• Video Not Available: Some videos may be private, deleted, or geo-restricted
• Age-Restricted Content: May require additional verification
• Rate Limiting: YouTube platform-level restrictions may affect availability
• Insufficient Credits: Check credit balance before making requests
• Data Extraction Failure: Some videos may have non-standard data structures
• Authentication: Ensure Bearer token is correctly formatted and valid

🎯 Use Cases

Content Research & Analysis

Analyze video performance, extract metadata, and research trending content.

curl --location 'https://scrapingapi.qoest.com/v1/youtube' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
--data '{
    "url": "https://youtube.com/watch?v=trending_video_id"
}'

Educational Content Curation

Extract educational video data, chapters, and metadata for learning platforms.

curl --location 'https://scrapingapi.qoest.com/v1/youtube' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
--data '{
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=educational_tutorial_id"
}'

Competitor Analysis & Market Research

Monitor competitor channels, analyze content strategies, and track performance metrics.

curl --location 'https://scrapingapi.qoest.com/v1/youtube' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
--data '{
    "url": "https://youtu.be/competitor_video_id"
}'

Content Marketing Intelligence

Research viral content, trending topics, and audience engagement patterns.

curl --location 'https://scrapingapi.qoest.com/v1/youtube' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
--data '{
    "url": "https://youtube.com/watch?v=viral_marketing_video"
}'

Academic Research & Data Collection

Collect YouTube data for academic studies, media research, and social analysis.

curl --location 'https://scrapingapi.qoest.com/v1/youtube' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
--data '{
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=research_subject_video"
}'

News & Journalism Monitoring

Track news videos, press conferences, and journalistic content for media analysis.

curl --location 'https://scrapingapi.qoest.com/v1/youtube' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
--data '{
    "url": "https://youtu.be/news_conference_id"
}'

Entertainment Industry Analysis

Monitor entertainment content, music videos, and celebrity channels for industry insights.

curl --location 'https://scrapingapi.qoest.com/v1/youtube' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
--data '{
    "url": "https://youtube.com/watch?v=music_video_id"
}'

SEO & Digital Marketing Research

Analyze video SEO strategies, hashtag usage, and content optimization techniques.

curl --location 'https://scrapingapi.qoest.com/v1/youtube' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
--data '{
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seo_optimized_video"
}'

📊 Extracted Data Fields

Video Metadata

• Title: Full video title
• Description: Complete video description
• View Count: Total views with formatting
• Like Count: Number of likes with abbreviations
• Publish Date: Original publication date
• Relative Date: Time since publication

Channel Information

• Author: Channel name/creator
• Channel ID: Unique YouTube channel identifier
• Subscriber Count: Channel subscriber count with formatting

Additional Features

• Hashtags: Extracted hashtags from video
• Chapters: Timestamped video chapters with direct links
• Thumbnail URL: High-resolution thumbnail image (maxresdefault.jpg)

URL Structure for Chapters

Chapter URLs include timestamp parameters for direct navigation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID&t=SECONDS

📚 Related APIs

• Web Scraping - Extract website data
• Google Search - Extract search results
• Reddit Scraping - Extract social media data
• Twitter/X Scraping - Extract social media data
• Image OCR - Extract text from images
• PDF OCR - Extract text from PDFs