What is the YouTube Channel Scraper?
The InsightSocial YouTube Channel Scraper is a free Chrome extension that exports the video list of any YouTube channel to CSV, Excel, JSON, or Google Sheets. One row per video: title, link, video ID, views, upload age, duration, thumbnail, and the channel it belongs to. No YouTube Data API key, no Google Cloud project, no quota to budget, and no scrolling a Videos tab for twenty minutes to copy titles by hand.
It answers the question people type into Google in a dozen different ways: how do I get a list of all videos on a YouTube channel? The channel home page only shows a sample. The Videos tab shows everything, but only a screenful at a time, and YouTube offers no button to export it. The extension walks that tab for you, page after page, newest upload first, until it reaches the channel's oldest video or the number you asked for.
It does this by asking YouTube for the next page of the list the same way the page itself does when you scroll, from inside your own browser. Because it never needs to scroll, it keeps collecting while you work in another tab. That matters on a channel with a few thousand uploads.
Videos tab or Shorts tab
YouTube keeps a channel's long-form videos and its Shorts on separate tabs, and the extension gives you a run for each:
| Run | What it lists | What each row carries |
|---|---|---|
| Channel Videos | Every video on the channel's Videos tab, newest first | Title, URL, views, upload age and calculated date, duration, thumbnail, live flag, position |
| Channel Shorts | Every Short on the channel's Shorts tab | Title, URL, views, thumbnail, position |
Both runs attach the channel's name, @handle, channel ID and avatar to every row. The Shorts tab shows less per item than the Videos tab, so Shorts rows have no upload date or duration: the list itself does not carry them. If you need both formats, run Videos and Shorts one after the other. Each is its own session in the portal.
You can start from any page of the channel. Open youtube.com/@handle, its About page, or its Playlists, pick Videos or Shorts in the sidebar, and the extension opens the matching tab before it starts. Channel URLs in the /channel/UC..., /c/name and /user/name forms work too.
Who is it for?
- Creators and channel managers pulling their own back catalogue into a sheet to see which topics and formats keep earning views
- Competitive researchers exporting a rival channel's full upload history: what they publish, how often, and which uploads took off
- Influencer and sponsorship teams checking a creator before a deal: upload cadence, typical views per video, and the share of output that is Shorts
- Content strategists sorting a niche leader's catalogue by views to find the titles worth learning from
- Analysts and academics building a dataset of video IDs, titles and view counts without registering for API access
- Editors and archivists keeping a dated index of everything a channel has published
Key Benefits
- The whole tab, not a sample: the run follows the Videos or Shorts tab to its end, so a 1,500-video channel comes back as 1,500 rows rather than the handful on the home page
- Keeps going in a background tab: no scrolling means no stalling when the tab is hidden; switch away and come back to a finished list
- Sortable numbers: views and duration arrive as numbers next to YouTube's own display text, so "1.2M views" and "12:41" sort and average in a spreadsheet without cleanup
- Stop any time, keep what you have: videos are saved in batches as each page arrives, so a run you cut short is still a usable export
- No API setup: nothing to register, no key to protect, no quota units to count
How to Export All Videos From a YouTube Channel
Step 1: Install the Extension
Add InsightSocial from the Chrome Web Store. The icon appears in your browser toolbar.
Step 2: Open the Channel
Go to any page of the channel you want: youtube.com/@handle, a /channel/UC... link, or straight to its Videos tab. You do not need to be signed in to YouTube for a public channel.
Step 3: Open the Sidebar and Pick a Run
Click the InsightSocial icon. The sidebar recognises the channel and offers Channel Videos and Channel Shorts. Pick one. If you are not on that tab yet, the extension opens it for you.
Step 4: Set How Many
Choose 50, 200 or 500, or type your own number. To export a channel's entire catalogue, enter a number at least as large as its video count. The run ends on its own when the list runs out.
Step 5: Start, Then Work Elsewhere
Click Start. Videos appear in the sidebar's live feed as each page lands, with a running count. You can switch to another tab; the run keeps going. Just don't navigate the scraping tab itself to another page, because the run stops when the page it started on changes.
Step 6: Export
When the run finishes, export to CSV for a quick look, .xlsx for Excel, JSON for a script, or straight to Google Sheets. Every run is also saved to your private InsightSocial portal, where the list shows thumbnails, sorts by views or date, and can be exported again later.
What Each Row Contains
A channel's video list carries less than a watch page does, and the export is honest about that. Here is what you get per video:
- Title and URL: a
watch?v=link for videos, a/shorts/link for Shorts, plus the video ID on its own column - Views: as a number, and as YouTube printed it. Lists round large counts ("1.2M views"), so the number is the rounded figure, not the exact count from the watch page
- Upload age and date: YouTube's text ("3 weeks ago") and a date calculated from it, accurate to the unit YouTube used. Videos tab only
- Duration: as shown ("12:41") and in seconds. Videos tab only
- Thumbnail URL for each video
- Is Short / Is Live flags. A channel that is streaming right now shows the stream with no view count, because the number YouTube displays is current viewers, not views
- List position: 1 is the newest upload on the tab
- Channel name, @handle, channel ID and avatar on every row
- Hashtags and mentions found in the title
What is not on the list, and therefore not in the export: like counts, comment counts, full descriptions, tags, and exact upload timestamps. For the discussion under a particular video, take its link from your export to the YouTube Comments Scraper, or the YouTube Shorts Comments Scraper for a Short.
YouTube Channel Scraper vs the Alternatives
There are four common ways to get a channel's video list into a spreadsheet. They suit different people:
| InsightSocial extension | YouTube Data API | Copy and paste | Command-line scripts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | Install the extension | Google Cloud project, API key, code | None | Install a tool, run commands |
| Daily quota | None | Yes, shared across all your calls | None | None |
| Full Videos tab | Yes | Yes | Only as far as you scroll | Usually |
| Shorts tab | Yes, as its own run | Mixed into uploads | Manually | Varies by tool |
| Views as a number | Yes (rounded as the list shows it) | Yes, exact | No | Varies |
| Exact upload timestamps | No, calculated from the age text | Yes | No | Varies |
| Likes and comment counts | No | Yes | No | Varies |
| Output | CSV, Excel, JSON, Google Sheets | JSON you parse yourself | Unstructured text | Usually JSON or text |
| Works in a background tab | Yes | Not applicable | No | Not applicable |
The honest summary: if you need exact publish times and like counts for every video and you are comfortable writing code against a quota, the official API returns more per video. If you want the complete list in a spreadsheet in a couple of minutes, without a developer account, the extension is the shorter road.
Limits Worth Knowing
- Views are list values. They match what you see on the channel tab, including YouTube's rounding on large numbers, and they reflect the moment you ran the scrape.
- Upload dates are calculated. A video listed as "2 years ago" gets a date two years before the run, not its exact day. Recent uploads, shown in hours or days, come out close.
- Shorts carry fewer fields. The Shorts tab does not show an upload age or duration, so those columns are empty for Shorts.
- Only the Videos and Shorts tabs. The Live tab, Playlists, Community posts and a channel's subscriber count are not part of this run.
- The tab must stay on the channel. Switching to other tabs is fine; navigating the scraping tab elsewhere ends the run, with everything collected so far saved.
- YouTube can stop answering. If several page requests in a row fail, the run ends and keeps what it already has. Running it again later usually completes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I export a channel's video list to Excel?
Yes. Choose .xlsx when you export, or CSV, which opens in Excel too. Google Sheets is a direct export option as well. Each video is one row, with views and duration already numeric so you can sort the sheet by most viewed straight away.
In what order do the videos come out?
Newest first, the default order of a channel's Videos tab. The List Position column records that order, so you can always sort back to it after re-sorting by views.
Can I find a channel's most popular videos?
Export the full Videos tab, then sort by the Views column. Because the run covers the whole tab rather than YouTube's "Popular" shortcut, older breakout videos are in the file too.
Will the channel owner know I exported their video list?
No. The extension reads the same public list you see when you open the channel's Videos tab in your own browser. Nothing is posted and no notification is sent.
Can I track a channel over time?
Run the same channel again later and compare the two exports by video ID. New uploads appear as new IDs, and the Views column shows how each video moved between the two dates.
How is this different from the YouTube Search Scraper?
This run starts from one channel and lists that channel's uploads. The YouTube Search Scraper starts from a search and lists videos from every channel that ranks for it. A common workflow is to search a topic, spot the channels that keep appearing, then export those channels in full here.
How much does exporting cost?
Scraping is free and runs on every plan. Credits are spent only on the rows you export, one per row, and re-exporting a row you already paid for is free:
- Free plan: 500 exported rows per month
- Pro Monthly: 10,000 exported rows per month for $9.99/mo
- Pro Yearly: 10,000 exported rows per month, billed $95.88/year ($7.99/mo)
- Credit packs: one-time credits that never expire, used after your monthly rows run out
Comparing short-form catalogues across platforms? The TikTok Video Scraper exports the videos on a TikTok creator's profile, and the Instagram Reels Scraper does the same for an Instagram account's Reels.