# Scrape YouTube search results for a keyword, without a scraper

Give your agent a keyword. RouterGrowth returns the YouTube videos for that search as rows: link, channel, upload date, views, likes, comment count and the video description. No Google Cloud project, no daily quota and no scraper to keep up with YouTube's pages.

HTML page: https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/youtube/scraper
Part of: [YouTube tools](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/youtube.md)

## The call

[`social.search`](https://www.routergrowth.com/catalog/social.search): Public posts matching a keyword on X, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook: brand mentions, category conversations, competitor chatter.

Price on this network: $0.00525 per post, $0.002 minimum a call. The exact quote is shown before every run.

## What a real run returned

Run on 2026-10-19: 6 records in 45.7 s for $0.0315. Personal fields are masked. Six YouTube results for "crm tutorial": HubSpot, Salesforce and Dynamics walkthroughs from 2022 to 2026, each with views and likes.

| url | author | created_at | views | likes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QM5zunC44 | Me*** | 2025-07-18 | 329117 | 4500 |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VUWyMVK2Uc | Si*** | 2024-04-30 | 220634 | 3000 |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lfs5fAc1bU | Li*** | 2023-02-21 | 430866 | 3700 |

## How to do it

1. **Connect RouterGrowth once.** Add the MCP server to Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex or Cursor. A new workspace starts with $1 of credit, enough to run this example many times.
2. **Say the search.** Ask for the YouTube videos for a keyword and how many to read.
3. **Get the rows.** social.search returns each video with its link, channel, date, views, likes and comment count.
4. **Go deeper.** Ask for the comments under the top videos, or the channel's other uploads.

## Ask it like this

- Search YouTube for 'crm tutorial' and list the channels behind the results with their view counts. (`social.search`)
- Find the five most viewed videos for 'hubspot vs salesforce' and read the comments under them. (`social.search`, `social.comments`)
- For each channel in the 'crm tutorial' results, pull its latest uploads. (`social.search`, `social.posts`)

## Connect

MCP server: `https://api.routergrowth.com/mcp`

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http routergrowth https://api.routergrowth.com/mcp
```

```bash
npm install -g routergrowth && routergrowth setup
routergrowth run -c social.search -i '{"platform": "youtube", "query": "crm tutorial", "limit": 6}'
```

```bash
curl -X POST https://api.routergrowth.com/v1/run \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ROUTERGROWTH_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"capability": "social.search", "input": {"platform": "youtube", "query": "crm tutorial", "limit": 6}}'
```

## Worth knowing

- **Relevance, not date.** Results follow the search order, so older videos with many views can come first; this run returned videos from 2022 up.
- **Text is the description.** The text field holds the video description. There is no separate title field; the description usually names the topic.
- **No quota to manage.** There is no YouTube Data API key or daily unit budget; each call is billed per video returned.

## Questions

### Do I need a YouTube API key?

No. The call runs on RouterGrowth's providers with your RouterGrowth key.

### Can I sort by upload date?

Not in the call. The input is the keyword and a limit; sort or filter on created_at afterwards.

### Does it include Shorts?

Results are what the search returns for the keyword; filter on the link if you need to separate them.

### What does each result include?

The video link and id, description text, channel, upload date, views, likes and comment count.

## Related

- [Pull a YouTube channel's videos into Python with one API call](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/youtube/scraper-python.md)
- [Scrape the comments under a YouTube video into rows for your agent](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/youtube/comment-scraper.md)
- [Scrape a YouTube channel's uploads with views, likes and comments](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/youtube/channel-scraper.md)
- [Search YouTube comments with your AI agent](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/youtube/comments-search.md)