# YouTube video statistics: views, likes and metadata by video id

Views, likes, comment count, duration, title, description, tags and publish date, for any public video. 7 tools do this through 鹦鹉AI, including Google's own API.

## What is the best way to ask 鹦鹉AI?

Setup line (paste into any agent): `set up 鹦鹉AI — https://parrot.amorist.cn/llms.txt`

Then ask: "Using 鹦鹉AI, get the view count, like count and publish date for these 30 YouTube video ids and put them in a table sorted by views. Show me the price first."

- **Give it video ids** The v= parameter of the watch URL. Most tools take the id, not the URL.
- **Ask for a batch** Google's API takes 50 ids in one call for the price of one.
- **Name the fields you want** Views, likes and duration live in different parts of the response.

## Why go through 鹦鹉AI

- **No subscription, no seats** Charged per call. No card, no minimum; top up the prepaid balance.
- **Switch by changing a word** Another tool is a different word in the prompt, not a new integration.

Endpoints:

- `crawl4ai.youtube.video.detail` — One YouTube video's facts (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `brightdata.x.youtube-videos` — YouTube video details by URL (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `tikhub.x.youtube-web-v2-get-video-info` — YouTube video details by video id (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `tikhub.x.youtube-web-v2-get-video-info-v2` — YouTube video details by video id or URL (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `justoneapi.youtube.video.detail` — YouTube video metadata and stats by video id (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `scrapecreators.youtube.video.detail` — YouTube video or short by URL — views, chapters, captions (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `youtube.youtube.video.detail` — YouTube video stats by video id — views, likes, duration (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube

## What people actually struggle with

Almost nobody complains about the price of this call. They complain about the daily cap, and about whether the number they got is today's number. From ~180 Reddit and X posts in August 2026, with the promotional clusters excluded, these five recur.

**You cannot tell whether you ran out or something else broke**

> "The strange thing is, my daily usage counter (which I'm tracking in the script) shows that I'm nowhere near the daily quota limit." (r/pythontips, 2 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/pythontips/comments/1epf9dk/youtube_api_quota_issue_despite_not_reaching_the/)

What this page can do about it: The recurring complaint is not running out, it is not knowing why. We cannot fix Google's quota accounting. What a metered call gives you instead is a definite price before it goes and a definite outcome after, so the ambiguous middle disappears.

**Leaving your laptop changes the failure mode**

> "Apparently that IP address is for AWS." (r/MailChimp, 6 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/MailChimp/comments/1g9ft0z/youtube_api_error/)

What this page can do about it: The error underneath that thread is API_KEY_IP_ADDRESS_BLOCKED, and it is the same story as the transcript job: it worked until it was deployed. A call through 鹦鹉AI leaves the tool's infrastructure, not your host's. Whether your own host is blocked is a property of your host, and no tool can tell you that.

**The counts themselves are not stable at fine granularity**

> "during certain intervals, views increase without likes/comments scaling proportionally, while at the hourly aggregate level everything looks perfectly normal" (r/HiddenTrueCrimeChat, 23 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/HiddenTrueCrimeChat/comments/1prow46/ive_been_logging_htc_youtube_views_likes_and/)

What this page can do about it: This is the honest limit of every tool here. View counts are aggregated and sometimes revised downward by YouTube itself, and every tool here is downstream of that. None of them can tell you whose number is right, because on some hours no number is.

**The folk remedy is more keys, which is not a plan**

> "Google youtube API has a quota limits, so I added over 45 API" (r/MetaRayBanDisplay, 4 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/MetaRayBanDisplay/comments/1tyuxrx/viewtube_v20_question_for_all_google_youtube_api/)

What this page can do about it: Forty-five keys is a lot of Google projects to own, and it is the shape people reach for when the only lever is a daily cap. The alternative here is a per-call price with no cap and no rotation to maintain.

## What actually differs

- Like counts are returned as the channel chose to expose them, and a channel that hides its like count returns no field rather than a zero. Treat a missing field and a zero as different answers when you aggregate.

## What does a YouTube video stats API return?

One video's public record: the snippet (title, description, tags, channel, publish date), the statistics (view count, like count, comment count) and the content details (duration, definition, caption availability). It is the same data the watch page shows, as JSON. Watch time, impressions, click-through rate and audience retention are not here; those are YouTube Analytics, and only the channel owner can read them.

## Before you start

**Can I get watch time or retention?** No. Those are YouTube Analytics numbers and only the channel's owner can read them, through a connected account. Everything on this page is the public record of the video.

**How current are the view counts?** They are what the platform is publishing at the moment of the call. YouTube itself updates public view counts on its own schedule, so two tools reading a minute apart can legitimately disagree on a fast-moving video.

HTML version: https://parrot.amorist.cn/use-cases/video-details-views-and-stats