YouTube Channel Details API

What is the YouTube Channel Details API?

Pass a channel URL, @handle, or UC… id and get clean JSON. Canonical profile core: platform, id, username, url, displayName, bio, avatar, banner, followers, postCount, verified, createdAt. Identical-value aliases (handle/name/description/thumbnailUrl/bannerUrl/subscriberCount/videoCount/joinedAt/joinedDate) are not emitted. Also: canonicalUrl (@handle when known), followersIsApproximate (true when followers came from a K/M/B shelf label — 2.15M → 2150000), viewCount (exact when About exposes it; YouTube rounds subscribers, not views), country (ISO-3166 alpha-2) + countryName, links[{text,url}] with absolute https URLs, email when published in About/description (not the CAPTCHA reveal), and tags[] from channel SEO keywords (quote-aware — multi-word tags stay one entry). Identity-card convention: banner, country, countryName, and email stay on the key set and are null when unknown — we never substitute the avatar for a missing banner. Resolver/search rows (instagram/profile-search) omit-when-absent; that is a different class. following is omitted — YouTube does not publish a following count on the channel About card. createdAt is date-only (YYYY-MM-DD); YouTube only exposes the join day. Flat 1 credit. Cache is off by default.

What you get

• Display name, handle or URL, bio, and avatar when available
• Follower / subscriber and content counts
• Verification status and external links when exposed
• Structured JSON ready for enrichment and dashboards

Fill in the parameters below and copy a ready-to-run request, or open the live Playground to run it against your account (no API key paste).

curl "https://api.captapi.com/v1/youtube/channel-details?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fchannel%2FUCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer capt_live_..."
# or: -H "x-api-key: capt_live_..."

Example response

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
    "id": "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
    "name": "MrBeast",
    "handle": "@MrBeast",
    "description": "SUBSCRIBE FOR A COOKIE!\nNew MrBeast or MrBeast Gaming video every single Saturday at noon eastern time!\nAccomplishments:\n- Raised $20,000,000 To Plant 20,000,000 Trees\n- Removed 30,000,000 pounds of trash from the ocean\n- Helped 2,000 people walk again\n- Helped 1,000 blind people see\n- Helped 1,000 deaf people hear\n- Built wells in Africa\n- Built and gave away 100 houses\n- Adopted every dog in a shelter (twice)\n- Given millions to charity\n- Started my own snack company Feastables\n- Started my own software company Viewstats\n- Gave away a private island (twice)\n- Gave away 1 million meals\n- I counted to 100k\n- Ran a marathon in the world's largest shoes\n- Survived 50 hours in Antarctica\n- Recreated Squid Game in real life\n- Created the largest competition show with 1000 people (Beast Games)\n- Gave $5,000,000 to one person\n\nTerms & Conditions of Current Sweepstakes: \nhttps://mrb.gg/bow-and-arrow\nhttps://bit.ly/MrB_Birthday_YT\nhttps://bit.ly/MrB_Cash_Giveaway",
    "subscriberCount": 510000000,
    "videoCount": 994,
    "viewCount": 135029730952,
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/nxYrc_1_2f77DoBadyxMTmv7ZpRZapHR5jbuYe7PlPd5cIRJxtNNEYyOC0ZsxaDyJJzXrnJiuDE=s900-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
    "bannerUrl": null,
    "country": "US",
    "joinedDate": "Feb 19, 2012",
    "verified": true,
    "links": [
      {
        "text": "$1,000,000 Contest",
        "url": "https://themostdangerousgames.com"
      },
      {
        "text": "Follow",
        "url": "https://instagram.com/mrbeast"
      }
    ],
    "platform": "youtube",
    "canonicalUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast",
    "countryName": "United States",
    "joinedAt": "2012-02-19",
    "tags": [
      "challenge",
      "philanthropy"
    ]
  }
}

Billing metadata is returned in response headers: X-Captapi-Credits (credits charged), X-Captapi-Cache (hit or miss), and X-Captapi-Source. Failed requests (4xx/5xx) are never charged. See the full list of error codes in the error reference.

Response structure

A successful call returns success and a data object with the following fields:

Parameters

Authentication: send your key as Authorization: Bearer capt_live_.... A typical call costs 1 credit. Pass cache=true for a free 24h cache hit; default is always fresh.

How it works

1. 1. Sign up — get 100 free credits, no card required.
2. 2. Create a key from your dashboard.
3. 3. Send one request to /v1/youtube/channel-details and parse the JSON response.

Use cases

Frequently asked questions

More YouTube APIs