List a video's comments

Try in Playground

Read one page (20) of a video's top-level comments through the public comments continuation: text, author (name, channel ID, verified and creator flags, avatar, channel URL), relative publish time with its computed timestamp, like and reply counts, and a repliesContinuationToken for the replies operation. order=top (default) or newest; pass continuationToken for further pages.

GET/v1/youtube/video/commentsx-api-key

Headers

Get your API key

x-api-keystringrequiredheader

Your ScrapeAtlas customer key. Create one on /account/ and set SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY.

Query parameters

urlstringrequiredquery

YouTube video or Short URL (youtube.com/watch?v=…, youtu.be/…, /shorts/…, /embed/…, /live/…; www, m and music subdomains) or a bare 11-character video ID.

max 2048 chars

Examplehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vid0000001a

continuationTokenstringquery

Continuation token from a previous comments response. Response: Token for the next comments page or null.

orderenumquery

top (default, ranked by engagement) or newest (newest first after a pinned comment); repeat it with continuationToken.

one of: top, newest

Exampletop

sincenumber | stringquery

Earliest publication time to include, ISO 8601 or Unix seconds.

untilnumber | stringquery

Publication time to stop before, ISO 8601 or Unix seconds; later than since.

Response fields

requestIdstring

Operation identifier for correlation.

Upstream HTTP attempts, decoded bytes and duration.

accounting.upstreamRequestsinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.responseBytesinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.durationMsnumber

Always included.

≥ 0

successboolean

True when usable data was returned; inspect status and coverage.

statusenum

success, partial (coverage.warnings names the omission), failed or challenged.

one of: success, partial

Comments in YouTube's order: id, content, publishedTimeText, publishedTime (a best-effort estimate computed from the relative text, such as "3 weeks ago", at retrieval time; null when the text has no relative time), replyLevel (0), author {name with @, channelId, isVerified, isCreator, avatarUrl, channelUrl}, engagement {likes parsed from the displayed count, replies from the reply button}, repliesContinuationToken when the comment has replies and pinned (true on the pinned comment).

up to 100 items

comments.idstring

Always included.

min 1 chars

comments.contentstring

Always included.

comments.publishedTimeTextstringnullable

Always included.

comments.publishedTimestringnullable

Always included.

comments.replyLevelinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

Always included.

comments.author.namestringnullable

Always included.

comments.author.channelIdstringnullable

Always included.

comments.author.isVerifiedboolean

Always included.

comments.author.isCreatorboolean

Always included.

comments.author.avatarUrlstringnullable

Always included.

comments.author.channelUrlstringnullable

Always included.

comments.engagement.likesintegernullable

Always included.

≥ 0

comments.engagement.repliesintegernullable

Always included.

≥ 0

comments.repliesContinuationTokenstringoptional

Optional.

comments.pinnedbooleanoptional

Optional.

continuationTokenstringnullable

Continuation token from a previous comments response. Response: Token for the next comments page or null.

sourceUrlstring

Public YouTube URL the operation represents (page or API route).

absolute HTTPS URL

fetchedAtstring

UTC retrieval timestamp.

source is public_api; order: ranked (top) or newest_first (newest). since/until filter each page; with order=newest pages end once older than since. Relative times ("3 weeks ago") make window edges approximate.

coverage.sourceenum

Always included.

one of: public_page, public_api

coverage.completeboolean

Always included.

coverage.warningsenum[]

Always included.

up to 8 items

coverage.orderenumoptional

Optional.

one of: newest_first, oldest_first, ranked, relevance, source_order

Optional.

coverage.window.sincestringoptional

Optional.

coverage.window.untilstringoptional

Optional.

HTTP 200 returns the success variant. Check status: partial means usable data with warnings, and failed or challenged requests carry a failure object described in Errors & responses.

Error codes

HTTP	failure.code	Meaning
400	`invalid_request`	Missing, malformed, duplicate or conflicting parameters, unsupported parameters or an unsafe URL.
400	`invalid_continuation`	YouTube rejected the supplied continuation token.
401	`unauthorized`	Missing or invalid worker API key.
403	`restricted_page`	The channel, video, playlist or post is terminated, private, members-only or otherwise unavailable.
403	`age_restricted`	The video is age restricted and cannot be read logged out.
404	`not_found`	YouTube reports no channel, video, playlist or post for the identifier.
429	`upstream_rate_limited`	YouTube rate limited the request; no automatic retry.
502	`upstream_challenged`	YouTube rejected or challenged the request.
502	`unsupported_page`	The response lacks the embedded data, the data is malformed, or the resolved identity does not match the request.
502	`response_too_large` `payload_too_complex`	The response exceeded byte, depth or node limits.
502	`unsafe_redirect` `request_limit` `upstream_error`	The bounded request could not complete.
503	`busy`	All worker slots and the waiting queue are occupied.
504	`timeout`	The total retrieval deadline expired.

Code example

curl "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a&order=top" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a&order=top",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"
    }
  }
);

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.status, data);

type Result = {
  status: "success" | "partial" | "failed" | "challenged";
  requestId: string;
  [field: string]: unknown;
};

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a&order=top",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": process.env.SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY!
    }
  }
);

const data = (await response.json()) as Result;
if (data.status === "failed" || data.status === "challenged") {
  throw new Error(`YouTube request failed: ${data.requestId}`);
}
console.log(data);

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/comments",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    params={
        "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vid0000001a",
        "order": "top"
    },
    timeout=60,
)
data = response.json()
print(data["status"], data)

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
)

func main() {
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a&order=top", nil)
	req.Header.Set("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
	resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	var data map[string]interface{}
	json.NewDecoder(resp.Body).Decode(&data)
	fmt.Println(data["status"], data)
}

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        var client = HttpClient.newHttpClient();
        var request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .uri(URI.create("https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/youtube/video/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVid0000001a&order=top"))
            .GET()
            .header("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
            .build();
        var response = client.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
        System.out.println(response.body());
    }
}

Use your sa_live_… customer key at https://api.scrapeatlas.com.

Responses

Successful result. Synthetic example validated against the runtime contract.

{
  "success": true,
  "status": "success",
  "requestId": "00000000-0000-4000-8000-000000000022",
  "comments": [
    {
      "id": "UgSynthetic00000000AaABAg",
      "content": "Synthetic top comment",
      "publishedTimeText": "1 year ago",
      "publishedTime": "2025-09-12T12:00:00.000Z",
      "replyLevel": 0,
      "author": {
        "name": "@ExampleViewer",
        "channelId": "UCsynthetic0000000000003",
        "isVerified": false,
        "isCreator": false,
        "avatarUrl": "https://yt3.example.test/viewer=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
        "channelUrl": "https://youtube.com/@ExampleViewer"
      },
      "engagement": {
        "likes": 314000,
        "replies": 963
      },
      "repliesContinuationToken": "Eg0SC1ZpZDAwMDAwMDFhYRgGMkVzeW50aGV0aWNfY29udGludWF0aW9u"
    },
    {
      "id": "UgSynthetic00000001AaABAg",
      "content": "Another synthetic comment",
      "publishedTimeText": "2 months ago",
      "publishedTime": "2026-07-12T12:00:00.000Z",
      "replyLevel": 0,
      "author": {
        "name": "@ExampleViewer",
        "channelId": "UCsynthetic0000000000003",
        "isVerified": false,
        "isCreator": false,
        "avatarUrl": "https://yt3.example.test/viewer=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
        "channelUrl": "https://youtube.com/@ExampleViewer"
      },
      "engagement": {
        "likes": 225,
        "replies": 0
      }
    }
  ],
  "continuationToken": "Eg0SC1ZpZDAwMDAwMDFhYRgGMkVzeW50aGV0aWNfY29udGludWF0aW9u",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vid0000001a",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-12T12:00:00.000Z",
  "coverage": {
    "source": "public_api",
    "complete": true,
    "warnings": []
  },
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 1,
    "responseBytes": 33000,
    "durationMs": 500
  }
}

Missing, malformed, duplicate or conflicting parameters, unsupported parameters or an unsafe URL. YouTube rejected the supplied continuation token.

{
  "requestId": "9d2f1c0a-6b1e-4c7d-9a8e-2f3b4c5d6e7f",
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 0,
    "responseBytes": 0,
    "durationMs": 0
  },
  "success": false,
  "status": "failed",
  "failure": {
    "code": "invalid_request",
    "message": "Invalid request: missing, duplicate, unsupported or malformed parameters."
  }
}