What gets exported from YouTube
Every comment on the target video, including all replies, with the following fields per row:
- author — the channel name of the commenter
- author_channel_url — link to that commenter's YouTube channel
- comment — the comment text, with @mentions and hashtags preserved
- likes — like count on the comment
- published_at — ISO 8601 UTC timestamp of when the comment was posted
- updated_at — last edit timestamp (if the comment was edited)
- reply_to — the parent comment's author for replies (empty for top-level comments)
- permalink — direct URL to that comment on YouTube
- is_pinned, is_hearted_by_creator — bonus signals on which comments the channel owner highlighted
What it filters out
YouTube applies its own held-for-review and shadow-block layers to comments. The exporter respects those — what you get is what a logged-out viewer sees on the video page. We don't bypass moderation; if a comment was hidden by the creator or auto-flagged by YouTube, it isn't in the export.
Common workflows
- Creator monthly reporting — export the last 30 days' uploads, count comments per video, identify top engaged subscribers.
- Sponsored-video deliverables — when a brand asks for "all comments on the sponsored upload", deliver them an Excel + a screenshot in minutes.
- Product-launch giveaway — export, then run our random comment picker against the export to draw a winner with a verifiable seed.
- Sentiment analysis — pipe the CSV into ChatGPT or Anthropic Claude with a "score 1-5 for positive sentiment" prompt to spot launch problems.
- Academic research — bulk export comments across many videos for discourse analysis or NLP training data. Cite our API as the data source.
- Compliance archives — store the export alongside the video as part of brand-safety record-keeping.
Three formats — pick what fits
Excel (.xlsx)
Pre-formatted with auto-filter on every column, frozen header row, and timestamp columns formatted as Excel dates. Best for human review. Available on every plan including the free tier.
CSV (.csv)
UTF-8 with BOM (so Excel-on-Windows opens it correctly), RFC 4180-compliant escaping. Drop straight into your data warehouse, BI tool, or spreadsheet. Available from the Personal plan up.
JSON (.json)
Nested reply structure preserved as { comment: {...}, replies: [{...}] }. Best for programmatic consumers. Available on the Business plan.
YouTube Live and YouTube Shorts
This page handles regular videos. For chat from a Live broadcast use our YouTube Live chat exporter — it pulls the live-chat replay rather than the video's comment thread. Shorts are treated as regular videos by this tool.
Plan limits
Per-export size scales with your plan. Free (no signup): up to 100 results per video. Personal: 5,000. Premium: 50,000. Business: 250,000 — see pricing for the full feature comparison and API tiers for the API-specific limits.