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 Video Comments 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/video/comments

YouTube Video Comments API

Q: How much does the YouTube Video Comments API cost?

10 credits per successful call. 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 comments on a video, each with the author name, comment text, like count, reply count, and publish timestamp.

Get a free API key Full API reference

10 credits a call · cursor pagination · failed calls free · 10 free calls to start

curl "https://api.insightsocial.app/v1/youtube/video/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdQw4w9WgXcQ" \
-H "x-api-key: $INSIGHTSOCIAL_API_KEY"

200 OKJSON

{
"success": true,
"platform": "youtube",
"endpoint": "/v1/youtube/video/comments",
"schema_version": "2",
"data": {
"items": [
{
"comment": {
"id": "<string>",
"url": "<string | null>",
"parent_id": "<string | null>",
"post_id": "<string | null>",
"text": "<string | null>",
"author": {
"id": "<string | null>",
"username": "<string | null>",
"display_name": "<string | null>",
"avatar_url": "<string | null>",
"verified": "<boolean | null>"
},
"engagement": {
"likes": "<integer | null>",
"replies": "<integer | null>"
},
"flags": {
"pinned": "<boolean | null>",
"deleted": "<boolean>"
},
"published_at": "<string | null>",
"language": "<string | null>",
"replies": "<array | null>",
"ext": "<object | null>"
}
}
]
},
"pagination": {
"next_cursor": "<string | null>",
"has_more": "<boolean>"
},
"unavailable": [],
"credits_used": "<integer>"
}

When to use it

Use it for a video's top-level comments, then pass a comment's id as continuationToken to video/comment/replies to open a single thread.

Parameters

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

Name	Required	Description
url	Yes	Full URL of the YouTube video to fetch comments for
order	No	Order of comments: 'top' (default, YouTube's relevance ranking) or 'newest' (exact newest-first on comment.published_at; each next page continues strictly older with no overlap: the lane for date-window and recency pulls).
searchTerm	No	Filter comments to those containing this search term.
format	No	Text format for comment bodies: 'html' (default) or 'plainText'.
max_results	No	Comments per page, 1-100. The default page is already 100, so set this only to shrink a page; out-of-range values are rejected with a free 400 rather than degrading the response.
channel_id	No	YouTube channel id to fetch channel-level community comments for (instead of a video's comments).
cursor	No	The pagination.next_cursor from the previous page, sent back unchanged. Omit it for the first page.

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
parent_id	string \| null	An identifier, always a string. Never parse it as a number: several platforms use ids above 2^53.
post_id	string \| null	An identifier, always a string. Never parse it as a number: several platforms use ids above 2^53.
text	string \| null
author.id	string \| null
author.username	string \| null
author.display_name	string \| null
author.avatar_url	string \| null
author.verified	boolean \| null
engagement.likes	integer \| null	A count. null when the platform does not expose it; 0 only when it is really zero.
engagement.replies	integer \| null	A count. null when the platform does not expose it; 0 only when it is really zero.
flags.pinned	boolean \| null
flags.deleted	boolean
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).
replies	array \| null
ext	object \| null	Platform-specific fields, snake_case.

Every field, error and example is in the YouTube Video Comments API reference.

How much does the YouTube Video Comments API cost?

10 credits per successful call.

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