# YouTube channel stats API: subscribers, total views and profile

Subscriber count, lifetime views, video count, description, country and links, for any public channel. 6 tools do this through 鹦鹉AI, including Google's own API, which resolves an @handle without you having to find the UC id first.

## 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 subscriber count, total views and video count for @MrBeast and @mkbhd, and tell me which has more views per video. Show me the price first."

- **A handle is enough** Google's API resolves @handle directly. The scrapers vary; some need the UC id.
- **Ask for the pair you need** Profile and statistics are separate parts of the response. Name both.
- **Ask it to do the arithmetic** Views per video and subscribers per video are one line, not a spreadsheet.

## 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.channel.profile` — One YouTube channel's facts (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `youtube.youtube.channel.profile` — Your YouTube channel profile — subscribers, views (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `tikhub.x.youtube-web-v2-get-channel-description` — YouTube channel description by channel id (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `tikhub.x.youtube-web-get-channel-info` — YouTube channel profile by channel id (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `scrapecreators.youtube.channel.profile` — YouTube channel profile by id or username — subscribers (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube
- `brightdata.x.youtube-channels` — YouTube channel profile by URL (youtube): https://parrot.amorist.cn/catalog/youtube

## What people actually struggle with

Two things stop people here, and neither is the price: how fresh the numbers are, and whether touching the API can hurt the channel they already run. From ~180 Reddit and X posts in August 2026, with the promotional clusters excluded.

**One response, and its fields disagree about how current they are**

> "So one field in the response was stale while the other two were fresh." (r/googlecloud, 1 point: https://www.reddit.com/r/googlecloud/comments/1tjofun/youtube_data_api_v3_channelstatisticsviewcount/)

What this page can do about it: Documented day by day in that thread: lifetime viewCount frozen for over a day while subscriberCount and videoCount kept moving, inside Google's own API. Every tool on this page reads from the same well, so no one can rank them on whether a number is today's. Record when you pulled and treat a flat total as suspect, not as news.

**People are afraid the API itself will hurt their channel**

> "Is there any risk that my main channel could be shadowbanned, restricted, or lose its algorithmic reach just by using the official API" (r/youtube, 3 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1vlva1i/question_regarding_youtube_data_api_v3_readonly/)

What this page can do about it: A fair question that almost nobody answers in writing. Reading public channel data through one of the paid tools here happens server side on a credential that has nothing to do with your creator account, so there is no account of yours in the request at all.

**Whether you may keep and show the data is a separate question**

> "Can I legally use YouTube channel profile pictures and public stats from the YouTube API in a collectible card game?" (r/legaladvice: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/1v6c5ni/can_i_legally_use_youtube_channel_profile/)

What this page can do about it: No one can answer this and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Public and reusable are different things; storing, republishing and putting someone's avatar on a product are governed by YouTube's terms and by the law where you are. Read the terms, and take advice if money is involved.

**Nobody wants a channel endpoint, they want the channel**

> "I want to archive everything from the videos, to the likes, view and comments on it, lives and the same for it" (r/DataHoarder, 20 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1s426uf/need_help_with_youtube_channel_archivescraping/)

What this page can do about it: That is four jobs chained: the profile, the uploads list, per video stats, then comments. Asking Google for part=contentDetails hands you the uploads playlist id, which is the cheap way into the catalogue without spending a search. Your agent runs the chain; 鹦鹉AI prices each step.

## What actually differs

- The three tools disagree about what identifies a channel. Google's API takes exactly one of mine, id or forHandle, so an @handle resolves in a single call; ScrapeCreators accepts a channel id, a handle or a URL; TikHub needs the UC channel id, so a handle costs you a lookup first.
- Subscriber counts come back as YouTube publishes them, which is rounded once a channel is past a thousand. Two tools reading the same channel will agree on the rounded figure and neither has the exact one, because the platform does not expose it.
- Asking Google for part=contentDetails also returns the uploads playlist id, which is how you list a channel's videos without spending a search call. It is the cheapest path from a channel to its catalogue by a wide margin.

## What counts as a channel's lifetime stats?

The three totals a channel publishes about itself: subscribers, views across every video, and how many public videos it has. Alongside them come the profile fields: title, description, custom URL, country, keywords, banner and thumbnail. These are cumulative totals, not a time series, so measuring growth means reading them repeatedly and keeping your own history.

## Before you start

**Can I get a channel's subscriber history?** Not from any of these. They return the current totals, because that is all YouTube publishes. A growth curve means calling on a schedule and storing what you get.

**How do I find a channel by name?** Search for it first, then read the profile. Channel search is a separate job on this menu and returns the ids these endpoints take.

**Can I read another channel's analytics?** No, and no tool can. Watch time, traffic sources and audience data are visible only to the channel's owner through a connected account. Everything here is public.

HTML version: https://parrot.amorist.cn/use-cases/youtube-channel-stats