Do I need a YouTube developer account?

No. There is no YouTube app, OAuth flow or app review. One InsightSocial API key works for this endpoint and every other platform, and your first 10 calls priced at 100 credits or less are free.

How do I get every result, not just the first page?

This endpoint pages. Each response carries pagination.next_cursor and pagination.has_more. Send next_cursor back unchanged as the cursor parameter and stop when has_more is false. Every page is a separate call and is charged as one.

What happens if the account is private or nothing is found?

You get an error or an empty result, and it costs 0 credits. The API reads public YouTube data only, so private accounts and deleted content come back as not found rather than as partial data.

Can I call the YouTube Search Advanced API from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor?

Yes. Add the hosted MCP server at https://api.insightsocial.app/mcp to your AI app and sign in. The assistant finds this endpoint by name, shows its price and calls it with your credits.

GET /v1/youtube/search/advanced

YouTube Search Advanced API

Q: How do I use the YouTube Search Advanced API?

Send GET /v1/youtube/search/advanced with the query parameter and your key in the x-api-key header. Returns video search results with the full filter set: sort order, length, live status, license, category, country, language, and publish date window.

Q: How much does the YouTube Search Advanced API cost?

Metered: 10–110 credits a call. The ceiling is reserved when the call starts and you are charged what it actually read. A call that errors or finds nothing costs 0 credits, and an answer from the shared cache costs 2. Pro's 10,000 monthly credits cover about 1,000 calls at 10 credits each. Add dry_run=1 to see the price of a call without making it.

Returns video search results with the full filter set: sort order, length, live status, license, category, country, language, and publish date window.

Get a free API key Full API reference

10–110 credits, metered · cursor pagination · failed calls free · 10 free calls to start

curl "https://api.insightsocial.app/v1/youtube/search/advanced?query=lofi+hip+hop" \
-H "x-api-key: $INSIGHTSOCIAL_API_KEY"

200 OKJSON

{
"success": true,
"platform": "youtube",
"endpoint": "/v1/youtube/search/advanced",
"schema_version": "2",
"data": {
"items": [
{
"post": {
"id": "<string>",
"url": "<string | null>",
"kind": "<string | null>",
"content": {
"text": "<string | null>",
"media_urls": "<array | null>",
"thumbnail_url": "<string | null>",
"duration_seconds": "<number | null>"
},
"author": {
"id": "<string | null>",
"username": "<string | null>",
"display_name": "<string | null>",
"avatar_url": "<string | null>",
"verified": "<boolean | null>"
},
"engagement": {
"views": "<integer | null>",
"likes": "<integer | null>",
"comments": "<integer | null>",
"shares": "<integer | null>",
"saves": "<integer | null>"
},
"flags": {
"nsfw": "<boolean | null>",
"spoiler": "<boolean | null>",
"pinned": "<boolean | null>",
"deleted": "<boolean>",
"likes_hidden": "<boolean | null>",
"comments_hidden": "<boolean | null>",
"shares_hidden": "<boolean | null>",
"views_hidden": "<boolean | null>",
"saves_hidden": "<boolean | null>"
},
"published_at": "<string | null>",
"language": "<string | null>",
"ext": "<object | null>"
}
}
]
},
"pagination": {
"next_cursor": "<string | null>",
"has_more": "<boolean>"
},
"unavailable": [],
"credits_used": "<integer>"
}

When to use it

Use it when a plain keyword search is too blunt; results are always videos, so use search when you also want channels or playlists back.

Parameters

Query parameters for GET /v1/youtube/search/advanced. Send your key in the x-api-key header.

Name	Required	Description
query	Yes	Search query.
order	No	Sort order: date, rating, relevance (default), title, videoCount, viewCount. order=date is exact (measured: zero inversions against the timestamps). order=viewCount is YouTube's popularity-weighted ranking: the top result is the true maximum but mid-list order is approximate, so for exact ranking add includeExtras=true and sort the page on engagement.views client-side. Both are far more faithful than /v1/youtube/search's sortBy=popular, which is not view-ordered at all.
duration	No	Video length: short (<4m), medium (4-20m), long (>20m), any. Genuinely applied (unlike /v1/youtube/search's duration, which the platform ignores). short plus a client-side post.content.duration_seconds <= 180 filter is the documented Shorts approximation: see the endpoint description for why it is an approximation and not a Shorts filter.
event_type	No	Broadcast type: live, upcoming, completed.
license	No	License filter: creativeCommon, youtube, any.
category	No	YouTube video category id (e.g. 10 = Music).
region	No	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code.
language	No	Preferred result language (ISO 639-1).
published_after	No	RFC-3339 datetime lower bound (e.g. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z). Exact and genuinely applied. This is the endpoint to use for date-window work.
published_before	No	RFC-3339 datetime upper bound. Exact and genuinely applied.
channel_id	No	Restrict results to a single channel id.
max_results	No	Maximum number of videos to return (1-50). Honored exactly: a page of 50 returns 50 (live-verified).
cursor	No	Pagination cursor from a previous response: fetches the next page.
safe_search	No	Safe-search filter: none, moderate, strict.
video_caption	No	Caption filter: any, closedCaption, none.
video_definition	No	Quality filter: any, high, standard.
video_dimension	No	Dimension filter: 2d, 3d, any.
video_embeddable	No	Restrict to embeddable videos: true, any.
video_type	No	Type filter: any, episode, movie.
topic_id	No	Restrict to a Freebase topic id (e.g. /m/04rlf for music).
location	No	Latitude,longitude center for a geo search (e.g. 37.42307,-122.08427). Must be used together with location_radius.
location_radius	No	Radius around location with a unit suffix (e.g. 50km, 10mi). Must be used together with location.
includeExtras	No	Set to true to add the view, like and comment counts (post.engagement.views / .likes / .comments) and the video length (post.content.duration_seconds) to every result. Left off, those four are null. YouTube's search index returns snippets only, so the counts come from a second lookup.
include	No	Set to channel (one token only) to add each row's channel stats in this one call. channel puts the channel's subscriber count on post.ext.author_followers (YouTube's own figure, which it rounds to three significant figures above 1,000) and fills the channel's post.author.display_name, .avatar_url and .username where missing. Each join adds 0.2 to 0.7 seconds on a fresh page (one lookup per 50 ids, never more than 8 seconds).
min_views	No	Keep only rows with at least this many views (post.engagement.views). A row whose view count is unknown is discarded, so every returned row meets the floor.
max_age_days	No	Keep only rows published within this many days (post.published_at), 1 to 3650. A row with no date is discarded.
sort_rows	No	views: return the kept rows ordered by view count, highest first, across every page walked. Rows without a view count go last.
max_pages	No	1 to 5 (default 1). Walk up to this many pages in one call and return the rows from all of them (after any filter). Each page walked is billed as one call to this endpoint; the whole walk counts once against your rate limit.

Response fields

The same unified schema every platform returns, so code written for YouTube works on the other eight. A field the platform did not provide is null and listed in unavailable.

Field	Type	Notes
id	string	An identifier, always a string. Never parse it as a number: several platforms use ids above 2^53.
url	string \| null
kind	string \| null	The format of the post. Format words only, never a platform name. short = short-form vertical video (a reel, a TikTok, a YouTube Short).
content.text	string \| null
content.media_urls	array \| null
content.thumbnail_url	string \| null
content.duration_seconds	number \| null
author.id	string \| null
author.username	string \| null
author.display_name	string \| null
author.avatar_url	string \| null
author.verified	boolean \| null
engagement.views	integer \| null	A count. null when the platform does not expose it; 0 only when it is really zero.
engagement.likes	integer \| null	A count. null when the platform does not expose it; 0 only when it is really zero.
engagement.comments	integer \| null	A count. null when the platform does not expose it; 0 only when it is really zero.
engagement.shares	integer \| null	A count. null when the platform does not expose it; 0 only when it is really zero.
engagement.saves	integer \| null	A count. null when the platform does not expose it; 0 only when it is really zero.
flags.nsfw	boolean \| null
flags.spoiler	boolean \| null
flags.pinned	boolean \| null
flags.deleted	boolean
flags.likes_hidden	boolean \| null
flags.comments_hidden	boolean \| null
flags.shares_hidden	boolean \| null
flags.views_hidden	boolean \| null
flags.saves_hidden	boolean \| null
published_at	string \| null	ISO-8601 timestamp in UTC, ending in Z.
language	string \| null	The content's language as the platform states it, e.g. en, pt-BR. Detected languages come later (§7.1).
ext	object \| null	Platform-specific fields, snake_case.

Every field, error and example is in the YouTube Search Advanced API reference.

How much does the YouTube Search Advanced API cost?

Metered: 10–110 credits a call. The ceiling is reserved when the call starts and you are charged what it actually read.

Failed calls are free
A call that errors or finds nothing costs 0 credits.
Know the price first
Add dry_run=1 and the response quotes the call without making it. Nothing is charged.
One balance
API calls and Chrome extension exports share the same credits, on the free plan too.

See plans and credit packs How credits work