# YouTube channel stats API: subscribers, total views and profile

Subscriber count, lifetime views, video count, description, country and links, for any public channel. 4 providers do this through one treg.to key, including Google's own API on your account, which resolves an @handle without you having to find the UC id first.

## What's the best way to ask ChatGPT?

Setup line (paste into any agent): `set up treg — https://treg.to/llms.txt`

Then ask: "Using treg, get the subscriber count, total views and video count for @MrBeast and @mkbhd, and tell me which has more views per video. Show me the price first."

- **A handle is enough** Google's API resolves @handle directly. The scrapers vary; some need the UC id.
- **Ask for the pair you need** Profile and statistics are separate parts of the response. Name both.
- **Ask it to do the arithmetic** Views per video and subscribers per video are one line, not a spreadsheet.
- **Say whose key to use** Your own Google connection is free and never metered.

## Why go through treg.to

- **One key, not 9 accounts** treg.to holds the provider keys. Neither you nor the agent sees them.
- **Price before the call** The provider's own rate, $0.000 markup, from a prepaid balance.
- **No subscription, no seats** Charged per call. $1.00 free per new team, no card to start.
- **Your own keys are free** Already pay Hunter? Register it and those calls are never metered.
- **Switch by changing a word** Another provider is a different word in the prompt, not a new integration.
- **Nothing to integrate** No SDK, no OAuth dance per vendor, no seats.

## Behind the scenes: what ChatGPT sees before it calls

treg.to does not choose for you. It hands ChatGPT this comparison and it picks, or you tell it how.

### Which YouTube channel stats API is cheapest?

- Cheapest per result: Bright Data at $0.0015 (`brightdata.x.youtube-channels`)
- Cheapest per call: ScrapeCreators at $0.00188 (`scrapecreators.youtube.channel.profile`)
- Cheapest per found: TikHub at $0.001 (`tikhub.x.youtube-web-get-channel-info`)

Those units are not interchangeable: one call can return many results, so compare on the unit you will actually be billed in.

### Which one is the most reliable?

- ScrapeCreators: 100% over 358 calls, 966ms median
- TikHub: 100% over 10 calls, 990ms median

Measured on treg.to traffic; not a controlled benchmark.

### How do the providers compare?

| Provider | Price | Accepts | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| TikHub | $0.001 per found | channel_id, continuation_token, language_code, country_code, need_format | 2026-07-28 |
| Bright Data | $0.0015 per result | dataset_id, format, input | 2026-07-30 |
| ScrapeCreators | $0.00188 per call | channelId, handle, url | 2026-07-28 |
| YouTube | own account, free | part, mine, id, forHandle | 2026-07-28 |

Endpoints:

- `brightdata.x.youtube-channels`: treg call brightdata.x.youtube-channels --query dataset_id=gd_lk538t2k2p1k3oos71 --query format=json --data '[{"url":"https://www.youtube.com/@YouTube"}]'
- `scrapecreators.youtube.channel.profile`: treg call scrapecreators.youtube.channel.profile --query channelId=UC-9-kyTW8ZkZNDHQJ6FgpwQ
- `tikhub.x.youtube-web-get-channel-info`: treg call tikhub.x.youtube-web-get-channel-info --query channel_id=UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw
- `tikhub.x.youtube-web-v2-get-channel-description`: treg call tikhub.x.youtube-web-v2-get-channel-description --query channel_id=UCeu6U67OzJhV1KwBansH3Dg --query language_code=zh-CN --query country_code=US
- `youtube.youtube.channel.profile`: treg call youtube.youtube.channel.profile --query part=snippet,statistics --query id=UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ

## What people actually struggle with

Two things stop people here, and neither is the price: how fresh the numbers are, and whether touching the API can hurt the channel they already run. From ~180 Reddit and X posts in August 2026, with the vendor clusters excluded.

**One response, and its fields disagree about how current they are**

> "So one field in the response was stale while the other two were fresh." (r/googlecloud, 1 point: https://www.reddit.com/r/googlecloud/comments/1tjofun/youtube_data_api_v3_channelstatisticsviewcount/)

What this page can do about it: Documented day by day in that thread: lifetime viewCount frozen for over a day while subscriberCount and videoCount kept moving, inside Google's own API. Every provider on this page reads from the same well, so no comparison table can rank them on whether a number is today's. Record when you pulled and treat a flat total as suspect, not as news.

**People are afraid the API itself will hurt their channel**

> "Is there any risk that my main channel could be shadowbanned, restricted, or lose its algorithmic reach just by using the official API" (r/youtube, 3 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1vlva1i/question_regarding_youtube_data_api_v3_readonly/)

What this page can do about it: A fair question that almost nobody answers in writing. Reading public channel data through one of the paid providers here happens server side on a credential that has nothing to do with your creator account, so there is no account of yours in the request at all. If you use the free Google row instead, that is your connected account, by design.

**Quota is why people stop tracking channels, not why they start**

> "spending more api quota to start tracking a third channel from scratch" (r/HiddenTrueCrimeChat, 20 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/HiddenTrueCrimeChat/comments/1q1eryk/are_htcs_views_real_what_im_measuring_with_public/)

What this page can do about it: A researcher dropped a control channel because a third one cost more quota than they had. A channel read is 1 unit, so the free cap is roughly 10,000 snapshots a day; what actually burns it is polling often. Paid rows have no daily ceiling, which is the whole difference for anything long running.

**Whether you may keep and show the data is a separate question**

> "Can I legally use YouTube channel profile pictures and public stats from the YouTube API in a collectible card game?" (r/legaladvice: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/1v6c5ni/can_i_legally_use_youtube_channel_profile/)

What this page can do about it: No comparison table can answer this and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Public and reusable are different things; storing, republishing and putting someone's avatar on a product are governed by YouTube's terms and by the law where you are. Read the terms, and take advice if money is involved.

**Nobody wants a channel endpoint, they want the channel**

> "I want to archive everything from the videos, to the likes, view and comments on it, lives and the same for it" (r/DataHoarder, 20 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1s426uf/need_help_with_youtube_channel_archivescraping/)

What this page can do about it: That is four jobs chained: the profile, the uploads list, per video stats, then comments. Asking Google for part=contentDetails hands you the uploads playlist id, which is the cheap way into the catalogue without spending a search. Your agent runs the chain; treg.to prices each step.


## What actually differs

- The three providers disagree about what identifies a channel. Google's API takes exactly one of mine, id or forHandle, so an @handle resolves in a single call; ScrapeCreators accepts a channel id, a handle or a URL; TikHub needs the UC channel id, so a handle costs you a lookup first.
- Subscriber counts come back as YouTube publishes them, which is rounded once a channel is past a thousand. Two providers reading the same channel will agree on the rounded figure and neither has the exact one, because the platform does not expose it.
- Asking Google for part=contentDetails also returns the uploads playlist id, which is how you list a channel's videos without spending a search call. It is the cheapest path from a channel to its catalogue by a wide margin.

## What counts as a channel's lifetime stats?

The three totals a channel publishes about itself: subscribers, views across every video, and how many public videos it has. Alongside them come the profile fields: title, description, custom URL, country, keywords, banner and thumbnail. These are cumulative totals, not a time series, so measuring growth means reading them repeatedly and keeping your own history.

## Questions

**Can I get a channel's subscriber history?** Not from any of these. They return the current totals, because that is all YouTube publishes. A growth curve means calling on a schedule and storing what you get.

**How do I find a channel by name?** Search for it first, then read the profile. Channel search is a separate job on this menu and returns the ids these endpoints take.

**Is Google's API really free here?** Yes. It runs on the Google account you connect, so treg.to relays the call and meters nothing. Only calls on treg.to's own provider keys are billed.

**Can I read another channel's analytics?** No, and no provider can. Watch time, traffic sources and audience data are visible only to the channel's owner through a connected account. Everything here is public.

HTML version: https://treg.to/use-cases/youtube-video/a-channel-s-profile-and-lifetime-stats