Send your first YouTube API request

This guide shows you how to send a synchronous request to each Bright Data YouTube Scraper API endpoint. It covers channels, videos, and comments.

Prerequisites

A Bright Data account with an active API key
Completed the Quickstart

Request structure

Every synchronous request follows the same pattern:

POST https://api.brightdata.com/datasets/v3/scrape?dataset_id={DATASET_ID}&format=json
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY
Content-Type: application/json

[{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/..."}]

The only thing that changes between endpoints is the dataset_id and the input URL format.

Synchronous requests support up to 20 URLs and have a 1-minute timeout. If the request takes longer, the API automatically returns a snapshot_id instead. See async requests.

How to scrape YouTube channels

Dataset ID: gd_lk538t2k2p1k3oos71

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.brightdata.com/datasets/v3/scrape?dataset_id=gd_lk538t2k2p1k3oos71&format=json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '[{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"}]'

You should see a 200 response. This takes 10-30 seconds.

Example response

[
  {
    "channel_name": "MrBeast",
    "channel_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast",
    "subscribers": 358000000,
    "total_videos": 850,
    "total_views": 50000000000,
    "description": "...",
    "is_verified": true
  }
]

Full Channels response schema

How to scrape YouTube videos

Dataset ID: gd_lk56epmy2i5g7lzu0k

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.brightdata.com/datasets/v3/scrape?dataset_id=gd_lk56epmy2i5g7lzu0k&format=json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '[{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"}]'

Example response

[
  {
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
    "channel_name": "Rick Astley",
    "views": 1500000000,
    "likes": 16000000,
    "date_posted": "2009-10-25T00:00:00.000Z",
    "duration": "3:33",
    "description": "...",
    "num_comments": 2700000
  }
]

Full Videos response schema

How to scrape YouTube comments

Dataset ID: gd_lk9q0ew71spt1mxywf

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.brightdata.com/datasets/v3/scrape?dataset_id=gd_lk9q0ew71spt1mxywf&format=json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '[{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"}]'

Example response

[
  {
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "comment_user": "user123",
    "comment_user_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@user123",
    "comment_date": "2024-04-05T12:30:00.000Z",
    "comment": "This song never gets old!",
    "likes": 250,
    "replies": 12,
    "comment_id": "UgyKz0..."
  }
]

Full Comments response schema

Quick reference: dataset IDs

Endpoint	Dataset ID	URL pattern
Videos	`gd_lk56epmy2i5g7lzu0k`	`youtube.com/watch?v={video_id}`
Channels	`gd_lk538t2k2p1k3oos71`	`youtube.com/@{handle}`
Comments	`gd_lk9q0ew71spt1mxywf`	`youtube.com/watch?v={video_id}`

Output formats

Control the response format with the format query parameter:

Value	Description
`json`	JSON array (default)
`ndjson`	Newline-delimited JSON, one record per line
`csv`	Comma-separated values

Async batch requests

Scrape hundreds of URLs in a single batch job.

API reference

Full parameter and response field reference.

Get started

Data extraction

Web access

AI training data

Proxy networks

Send your first YouTube API request

Prerequisites

Request structure

How to scrape YouTube channels

How to scrape YouTube videos

How to scrape YouTube comments

Quick reference: dataset IDs

Output formats

Async batch requests

API reference

​Prerequisites

​Request structure

​How to scrape YouTube channels

​How to scrape YouTube videos

​How to scrape YouTube comments

​Quick reference: dataset IDs

​Output formats

​Related

Async batch requests

API reference

Prerequisites

Request structure

How to scrape YouTube channels

How to scrape YouTube videos

How to scrape YouTube comments

Quick reference: dataset IDs

Output formats

Related