# YouTube comment scraper: every comment on a video, as data

Pull a video's comments with authors, like counts, timestamps and replies, so your agent can read the audience instead of you scrolling. 5 providers do this through one treg.to key, and Google's own API is free on the account you already have.

## 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 comments on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ sorted by relevance. Show me the price first, then group them into the five things people complain about."

- **Give it the video** A URL or a video id, depending on the provider. Both are one field.
- **Choose the sort** Relevance surfaces the comments people upvoted. Time gets you the newest.
- **Ask for the analysis, not the dump** A thousand comments is not an answer. Ask for the themes.
- **Say how deep to go** Replies are nested and paginated. Top-level threads are usually enough.

## 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 comment API is cheapest?

- Cheapest per result: Bright Data at $0.0015 (`brightdata.x.youtube-comments`)
- Cheapest per found: TikHub at $0.001 (`tikhub.youtube.video.comments`)
- Cheapest per call: ScrapeCreators at $0.00188 (`scrapecreators.youtube.video.comments`)

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: 97% over 65 calls, 1.9s median

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

### How do the providers compare?

| Provider | Price | Accepts | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| TikHub | $0.001 per found | video_id, language_code, country_code, sort_by, continuation_token, need_format | 2026-07-28 |
| Bright Data | $0.0015 per result | dataset_id, format, input | unverified |
| ScrapeCreators | $0.00188 per call | url, order | 2026-07-28 |
| Just One API | $0.0148 per found | videoId, cursor, languageCode, countryCode, sortBy | 2026-07-28 |
| YouTube | own account, free | part, videoId, order, maxResults, pageToken, textFormat | 2026-07-28 |

Endpoints:

- `brightdata.x.youtube-comments`: treg call brightdata.x.youtube-comments
- `justoneapi.x.youtube-get-video-comment-v1`: treg call justoneapi.x.youtube-get-video-comment-v1 --query videoId=dQw4w9WgXcQ --query cursor=0 --query languageCode=zh-CN --query countryCode=US --query sortBy=newest
- `scrapecreators.youtube.video.comments`: treg call scrapecreators.youtube.video.comments --query url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
- `tikhub.youtube.video.comments`: treg call tikhub.youtube.video.comments --query video_id=dQw4w9WgXcQ --query language_code=en-US
- `youtube.youtube.video.comments`: treg call youtube.youtube.video.comments --query part=snippet --query videoId=dQw4w9WgXcQ --query maxResults=2

## What people actually struggle with

The people doing this job are not chasing volume, they are chasing the forty comments that matter. From ~180 Reddit and X posts in August 2026, with the vendor clusters excluded, these five are what they actually complain about.

**The data is easy, the filtering is the job**

> "a video with 3,000 comments might have 40 that are actually useful to me and the rest is noise" (r/claude, 3 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/claude/comments/1ragfjd/im_building_a_youtube_comment_filtering_tool_with/)

What this page can do about it: The most useful document in the whole research pass. They are on version six of that filter and get about 50% agreement with their own judgment. No provider on this page fixes that, and any that claims to is selling you something: getting the comments is the cheap half.

**YouTube gives you no way to search or export a comment section**

> "I find myself wanting to search youtube comments all the time. Because youtube lacks this feature (for some reason)" (r/SideProject, 2 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1uzurwc/made_a_free_chrome_extension_that_lets_you_search/)

What this page can do about it: True, and it is the whole reason this job exists. Every provider here hands back the comments as records with author, likes and timestamps, so searching, sorting and grouping them becomes something your agent does rather than something the site has to offer.

**Quota is what stops a long-running tracker**

> "it would also mean 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 dropping a control channel because a third one costs more quota than they have is the clearest argument on this page. Google's route is free and rationed; the paid rows have no daily ceiling, and you can mix them, spending quota first and paying past it.

**What comes back is not stable between two pulls**

> "How has youtube given me the wrong comments section on a video bro 💀" (r/Quadeca, 19 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/Quadeca/comments/1mhjev8/how_has_youtube_given_me_the_wrong_comments/)

What this page can do about it: Comment sections move: held-for-review, author-deleted and creator-hidden comments differ between two calls minutes apart, and the sort you ask for changes which arrive first. No provider here, and no comparison table, can tell you that you got all of them. Pin the sort order and record when you pulled.

**People want the whole channel, not one video**

> "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 several jobs chained, not one call: list the channel's videos, then pull comments per video, then paginate each. Your agent can run that loop and treg.to prices every step, but it does not run the loop for you, and on a large channel the bill is the sum of the parts.


## What actually differs

- Google's commentThreads method returns top-level threads with up to 5 replies inlined. Past that you fetch the rest by parent id, so a thread with hundreds of replies is a second and third call rather than a deeper response.
- A video with comments turned off answers 403 commentsDisabled on Google's API rather than an empty list. Treat that as a distinct outcome; the scraping providers signal it differently, and on a per-call biller you have still paid for the attempt.
- Bright Data bills per comment delivered, not per video. On a heavily commented video that is a materially different bill from a per-call provider, in either direction depending on how many you actually pull.

## What does a YouTube comment scraper return?

The public comment threads on a video: each comment's text, author name and channel, like count, published and updated times, and the replies underneath it. Comments are paginated, so a video with tens of thousands of them is many calls, and the order you ask for changes which ones arrive first.

## Questions

**Can I download all the comments on a video?** Yes, by paginating. It is one call per page on every provider here, so a heavily commented video costs proportionally more. The comparison shows the per-call and per-record rates side by side.

**Does this include replies?** Top-level threads come back with their first replies attached. Deeper replies are a further call per thread, which is worth knowing before you ask an agent for everything.

**Is scraping YouTube comments allowed?** The comments are public and Google's own API serves them, which is the route this page recommends first. The third-party providers read the public page; you are responsible for what you do with the data, including the privacy law that applies to you.

**Can I get comments from a whole channel?** Not in one call. List the channel's videos first, then fetch comments per video. Your agent can chain that; treg.to prices each step but does not run the loop for you.

HTML version: https://treg.to/use-cases/youtube-video/a-video-s-comments