Fetch Channel Metadata with YouTube.channel() in ytscrape¶

Retrieve rich metadata for any YouTube channel — subscribers, external links, banner, join date, and more — by id, handle, or URL.

YouTube.channel() fetches detailed metadata for a single YouTube channel and returns a ChannelDetails dataclass. It accepts a raw UC… channel id, an @handle, or any standard channel URL — all formats are resolved automatically.

Calling `yt.channel()`¶

from ytscrape import YouTube

with YouTube() as yt:
    # Channel id
    details = yt.channel("UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw")

    # @handle
    details = yt.channel("@RickAstleyYT")

    # Full channel URL
    details = yt.channel("https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstleyYT")

Supported input formats¶

Format	Example
`UC…` channel id	`UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw`
`@handle`	`@RickAstleyYT`
`/channel/UC…` URL	`https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw`
`/@handle` URL	`https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstleyYT`
`/c/name` URL	`https://www.youtube.com/c/RickAstleyYT`
`/user/name` URL	`https://www.youtube.com/user/RickAstleyVEVO`

Full example¶

The snippet below mirrors the official examples/08_channel_details.py example and shows every commonly used field:

from ytscrape import YouTube

with YouTube() as yt:
    # A channel id, @handle or any channel URL all work.
    details = yt.channel("https://www.youtube.com/@CodeBrux")

    print(f"Title:        {details.title}")
    print(f"Handle:       {details.handle}")
    print(f"Subscribers:  {details.subscribers}")
    print(f"Videos:       {details.video_count}")
    print(f"Views:        {details.view_count}")
    print(f"Country:      {details.country}")
    print(f"Joined:       {details.joined_date}")
    print(f"Family safe:  {details.is_family_safe}")
    print(f"Photo:        {details.photo}")
    print(f"Banner:       {details.banner}")
    print(f"Keywords:     {', '.join(details.keywords[:5])}")
    print(f"URL:          {details.url}")
    print(f"Vanity URL:   {details.vanity_url}")
    print(f"RSS:          {details.rss_url}")

    if details.links:
        print(f"Links:        {details.links}")
    if details.description:
        print(f"Description:  {details.description[:120]}...")

The `links` field¶

links is a dict[str, str] mapping a platform name to its URL. The keys are derived from the link titles and URLs that the channel owner has added to their profile. Well-known platforms — x, instagram, tiktok, facebook, spotify, discord, patreon, github, and others — get a predictable lowercase key. Custom links fall back to a slugified version of their title.

with YouTube() as yt:
    details = yt.channel("@RickAstleyYT")
    print(details.links)
    # e.g. {"x": "https://twitter.com/rickastley", "instagram": "https://instagram.com/..."}

    # Access a specific platform safely
    twitter = details.links.get("x")

If a channel has no external links, links is an empty dictionary.

Field reference¶

ChannelDetails is a frozen dataclass. All fields are listed below.

Field	Type	Description
`channel_id`	`str`	`UC…` channel id
`title`	`str \\| None`	Channel display name
`description`	`str \\| None`	Channel description
`handle`	`str \\| None`	`@handle` when available
`subscribers`	`str \\| None`	Subscriber count as rendered by YouTube (e.g. `"1.23M subscribers"`)
`video_count`	`str \\| None`	Number of public videos
`view_count`	`str \\| None`	Total channel view count
`keywords`	`tuple[str, ...]`	Channel keywords / tags
`tags`	`tuple[str, ...]`	Microformat tags (may overlap with `keywords`)
`thumbnail`	`str \\| None`	Channel avatar URL (alias for `photo`)
`photo`	`str \\| None`	Channel avatar URL
`banner`	`str \\| None`	Channel banner image URL
`vanity_url`	`str \\| None`	Custom vanity URL (e.g. `https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstleyYT`)
`rss_url`	`str \\| None`	RSS feed URL for the channel's public videos
`is_family_safe`	`bool \\| None`	Whether YouTube marks the channel as family-safe
`available_countries`	`tuple[str, ...]`	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes where the channel is available
`country`	`str \\| None`	Country the channel is registered in
`joined_date`	`str \\| None`	Join date as rendered by YouTube (e.g. `"Joined Oct 24, 2010"`)
`links`	`dict[str, str]`	External social / website links — `{"x": "…", "instagram": "…"}`
`url`	`str`	Canonical `https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC…` URL (computed property)

Note

Inputs that use a handle or a /c///user/ vanity path require an extra HTTP request to resolve the UC… channel id before the metadata request can be made. Passing the raw UC… id directly skips this lookup and is marginally faster.