How to Scrape Youtube Videos for Channels Using Airtable, Make and Apify

I’ve always found manual YouTube research to be a huge time-sink. After hours of copying video information and transcripts by hand, I knew there had to be a better way. That’s why I built my own YouTube scraping system using Airtable, Make, and Apify – and it’s changed everything about how I gather YouTube content.

My YouTube Scraping Setup

I created an Airtable app that lets me scrape videos in multiple ways with just a few clicks. The beauty of this system is its flexibility. I can grab videos from a single channel or bulk-scrape from multiple channels at once.

Here’s how it works for me:

1. I paste a YouTube channel URL into my dashboard
2. I click the “videos” button to scrape that specific channel
3. Or, if I’ve added multiple channels, I simply check boxes next to the ones I want to scrape
4. I can even set how many videos I want per channel
5. With one click, I get all videos from all selected channels

Behind the Scenes: The Make Workflow

The magic happens in my Make automation workflow. When I click that “videos” button, it triggers a series of actions:

First, the workflow checks if the checkbox is marked on the row where I clicked. This tells the system whether I want to:

• Scrape just one channel (checkbox not marked)
• Scrape multiple channels (checkbox marked)

If I’ve checked multiple channels, the workflow grabs all rows with checked boxes. If not, it just processes the single channel where I clicked the button.

Next, it validates each channel URL. If a URL is missing, I get an error message. With valid URLs, the workflow uses Apify to scrape the requested number of videos from each channel.

Getting the Video Content

For each video found, my workflow:

1. Uses a YouTube transcript scraper to get the full transcript
2. Checks if I’ve already scraped this video before
3. If it’s new, creates a new record with all the video data (likes, hashtags, view count, duration, title, and transcript)
4. If it already exists, updates the record with fresh data

When everything’s done, I get a message telling me how many videos were processed. The whole system runs automatically, saving me countless hours of manual work.

Why This System Works So Well

The real power of this setup is how it handles bulk operations. I can check 15 different YouTube channels, set different video counts for each one, and get everything with a single click. The system tracks what’s been scraped before, so I never end up with duplicates.

By combining Airtable’s organization, Make’s automation power, and Apify’s scraping capabilities, I’ve created a research tool that gives me more time to focus on analyzing content rather than gathering it.

If you’re doing any kind of YouTube research or content analysis, building a system like this could save you hours every week. The initial setup takes some time, but the ongoing time savings are absolutely worth it.