TL;DR: Apify and Bright Data lead for developers who need scale, Octoparse and Instant Data Scraper work best for non-coders, and the free YouTube Data API v3 still wins on cost if you can write a script.
YouTube comment sections have become one of the richest sources of unfiltered audience feedback on the internet. Product teams mine them for feature requests, marketers track sentiment on competitor videos, and researchers pull comment threads to train and evaluate language models. YouTube still does not offer a native export or download button for comments.
That gap is why a small industry of scrapers, browser extensions, and API wrappers exists. Some tools need real coding skill, others are entirely point and click, and pricing ranges from free to a few dollars per thousand comments. This roundup covers seven tools worth knowing in 2026, who each one fits best, and how to get comments out of a video in under ten minutes.
Apify is a scraping marketplace where independent developers publish “actors,” and YouTube comment extraction is one of the most crowded categories on the platform. Several actors compete for the same job, with pricing typically landing between $0.20 and $0.90 per 1,000 comments depending on which one you choose and whether replies are included.
The differentiator is choice combined with pay-per-use pricing. Instead of committing to a monthly SaaS subscription, you pay only for the comments you pull, and you can compare actors on speed, reply depth, and output format before committing to one. Most return data as JSON, CSV, or Excel, and results can be piped into n8n, Make, or a data warehouse through Apify’s API.
Apify fits developers and agencies running recurring extraction jobs who want infrastructure (proxies, retries, scheduling) handled for them without paying for a full SaaS dashboard.
Bright Data is built around large-scale, continuous web data collection, and its YouTube offering includes a dedicated Scraper API alongside ready-made comment datasets for teams that would rather buy data than build a pipeline. The platform also supports a no-code interface for users who are not writing scraping scripts themselves.
The differentiator is reliability at volume. Bright Data leans on a large residential proxy network specifically to avoid the IP blocks and CAPTCHA walls that stop smaller tools cold on high-volume jobs. That infrastructure is the reason it shows up first in most comparison guides for enterprise-scale YouTube data extraction.
This is the right pick for businesses that need ongoing, high-volume comment data (think thousands of videos tracked monthly) rather than a one-off export.
Octoparse is a desktop and cloud scraping tool built around a visual, point-and-click workflow, which means you build a YouTube extraction job by clicking elements on the page instead of writing code. It ships with a pre-built comments and replies template that pulls usernames, comment text, likes, publish time, and reply threads directly from a video URL.
The differentiator is that Octoparse runs in the cloud with built-in IP rotation, so infinite scroll and “load more” comment sections get handled automatically instead of requiring manual scripting for dynamic loading. Pricing for the comments template runs around $0.20 per 1,000 lines, with cloud platform plans starting near $75 a month for scheduling and proxy access.
Octoparse fits marketers and researchers who want more control than a browser extension offers but still need a no-code interface.
ExportComments.com is a web-based export tool that works across YouTube alongside several other platforms, making it a fit for teams that need comment data from more than one social channel without juggling separate tools. You paste a video URL, choose your filters, and export straight to CSV or Excel.
The differentiator is breadth. Rather than specializing in YouTube alone, it covers multiple platforms in one subscription, which matters for social media managers and researchers comparing sentiment across channels rather than just YouTube.
This tool fits non-technical users who want a fast web app rather than a browser extension or coding project, especially if YouTube is only one of several platforms they track.
The YouTube Data API v3 is Google’s own official method for pulling comment data, and it is free within its daily quota limits. It returns comment text, author, publish date, and like count in a clean, structured JSON response, and it is the only method on this list explicitly sanctioned by YouTube’s terms of service.
The differentiator is legitimacy and cost. Every other tool on this list is, at some level, working around the absence of an official export feature. The Data API is the sanctioned path, which matters for organizations concerned about terms-of-service risk, though it does require API key setup and enough coding knowledge to handle pagination and quota limits.
This route fits developers and technically comfortable marketers building a lightweight internal tool who don’t want to pay a third party for something Google already offers for free.
Instant Data Scraper is a free Chrome extension that scrapes visible page data, including comment threads, using automatic pattern detection rather than a pre-built template. You open a video, run the extension, and it scrolls and extracts what it finds on the page into a downloadable table.
The differentiator is that it costs nothing and requires zero setup. There is no account, no API key, and no configuration screen. The tradeoff is less customization and less resilience than a paid tool when YouTube changes its page structure, since there is no vendor actively maintaining templates against those changes.
This fits solo creators, students, and anyone who needs a one-time export from a handful of videos and does not want to pay for infrastructure they will use once.
Clay is better known as a go-to-market data platform, but its AI scraping assistant, Claygent, along with its Chrome extension and native “Scrape Website” integration, has become a practical way to pull YouTube comments without writing a scraper. You prompt Claygent in plain language and it handles the extraction and structuring.
The differentiator is that Clay treats the comment data as one input among many inside a broader outbound or research workflow, rather than a standalone export. Sales and growth teams already living inside Clay for lead enrichment can pull comment sentiment or creator mentions into the same table without switching tools.
This fits go-to-market and growth teams who already use Clay for prospecting and want comment data folded into an existing workflow rather than a separate export step. If you are evaluating AI-powered tools more broadly before committing to one, our expert-reviewed AI tools list is a useful starting point.
Picking a tool from the list above works for a single project or a monthly export. It gets harder once the request turns into “pull comments from every new competitor video, every week, and drop the sentiment into a dashboard.” That is a recurring automation problem, not a one-time scraping problem, and it is where most businesses eventually hit a wall with off-the-shelf tools.
End-to-end automation: Comment extraction, sentiment scoring, and reporting run on a schedule with no manual exports.
No per-tool subscription stacking: A workflow built in n8n or Python pulls comments, cleans them, and routes them wherever they need to go, instead of paying for five separate SaaS logins.
Custom data handling: Business logic (flagging complaint themes, tagging competitor mentions, filtering spam) gets built directly into the pipeline instead of bolted on afterward in a spreadsheet.
Direct integration: Results land in a CRM, a Slack channel, or a BI dashboard automatically instead of sitting in a downloaded CSV.
Built for your workflow, not a generic template: A custom pipeline handles the exact fields, filters, and schedule a business needs instead of forcing the request into a vendor’s fixed template.
For businesses running one-off exports, the tools above are the faster path. For businesses that need this running every week without someone remembering to log in and click export, a custom-built automation pipeline using tools like n8n and Python is usually the better long-term investment, which is the kind of workflow automation covered in our roundup of the best AI tools for digital marketers.
Step 1: Create an Apify account Sign up for a free Apify account, which comes with a monthly usage credit large enough to test most comment scraping actors before paying.
Step 2: Search the Apify Store for a comments actor Search “YouTube comments scraper” in the Apify Store and compare a few listed actors on price per 1,000 comments, reply support, and review rating.
Step 3: Open the actor and enter a video URL Paste the URL of the video you want comments from into the actor’s input field, along with how many comments you want and whether to include replies.
Step 4: Run the actor Click Start and let the actor run. Most comment jobs on a single video finish in under a minute.
Step 5: Export the dataset Once the run finishes, download the results as CSV, JSON, or Excel directly from the Apify console, or pull them programmatically through the Apify API.
Step 6: Automate repeat runs Set the actor up as a scheduled Apify task if you need the same video or channel checked on a recurring basis, so new comments get pulled without a manual re-run. If you want to build this kind of scheduled pipeline yourself rather than relying on Apify’s scheduler, our best vibe coding tools guide covers AI-assisted options for writing the automation code.
There is no single best YouTube comment scraper for every situation. Apify and Bright Data suit developers and agencies running high-volume jobs, Octoparse and Instant Data Scraper suit marketers who want a no-code option, and the YouTube Data API v3 remains the free, sanctioned route for anyone comfortable writing a short script.
The bigger decision is whether this is a one-time export or a recurring business need. A single export is best handled with one of the tools above. A recurring pipeline that feeds a dashboard or a sentiment report every week is usually better served by a custom automation build than by stacking multiple subscriptions.
Whichever route you take, the value is in what happens after the export. Raw comment data sitting in a spreadsheet is just noise until it is sorted, scored, and routed to the people who need to act on it.
The YouTube Data API v3 is free within Google’s quota limits, though it requires coding knowledge to set up. Instant Data Scraper is a free Chrome extension with zero setup for a one-time export.
The YouTube Data API v3 is the only method on the list explicitly sanctioned by YouTube’s terms of service, since every other tool works around the absence of a native export feature.
Octoparse uses a visual, point-and-click workflow with a pre-built comments and replies template, and Instant Data Scraper requires no account or configuration at all.
Pricing on Apify’s comment scraping actors typically runs between $0.20 and $0.90 per 1,000 comments, depending on the actor and whether replies are included.
Bright Data is built around large-scale, continuous data collection, leaning on a residential proxy network specifically to avoid the IP blocks and CAPTCHA walls that stop smaller tools at volume.
A one-time export is best handled with a tool from the list, but a recurring need, like pulling comments from every new competitor video weekly into a sentiment dashboard, is usually better served by a custom pipeline built in n8n or Python.
Best AI Tools for Digital Marketers: a roundup of AI tools for campaign research, content, and reporting.
7 Best AI Tools for Freelancers: tools that help independent operators automate client work.
Best Vibe Coding Tools: a look at AI-assisted coding tools worth using for building your own automations.
TL;DR: YouTube gives Shorts no native download button, so a dedicated downloader is the only…
Not every video stays where you found it. Tutorials get taken down, playlists go private,…
A great TikTok clip disappears the moment you close the app. No native save button…
Facebook makes saving a video harder than it needs to be. There's no built-in download…
Instagram wasn't built with saving in mind. Reels autoplay and vanish the second you scroll…
Freelancers lose entire days to work nobody pays for. Chasing invoices, writing proposals, taking meeting…
This website uses cookies.