third-party scrapers/etc of YouTube content

• https://ytcomment.kmcat.uk/
• https://github.com/egbertbouman/youtube-comment-downloader

InnerTube

I see various references to 'InnerTube', an unofficial name for YouTube's internal API. Although it's intended only for internal use, it's sometimes possible to get external tools to work with it.

(sidenote: You can find references to this internal API by googling for 'youtubei')

What is InnerTube?

• https://gizmodo.com/how-project-innertube-helped-pull-youtube-out-of-the-gu-1704946491
• https://www.fastcompany.com/3044995/to-take-on-hbo-and-netflix-youtube-had-to-rewire-itself

Third-party libraries:

• https://pypi.org/project/innertube/ and https://github.com/tombulled/innertube
• https://ytjs.dev/ and https://github.com/LuanRT/YouTube.js and https://www.npmjs.com/package/youtubei.js
  • FAQ
  • Authentication (there are two sections to this page, but the 2nd section basically says "this no longer works; the 1st section is the preferred way to authenticate")
• https://crates.io/crates/youtubei

Scripts that leverage the "InnerTube" API:

• https://medium.com/@aqib-2/extract-youtube-transcripts-using-innertube-api-2025-javascript-guide-dc417b762f49
• https://github.com/HoloArchivists/youtube-community-tab

Background discussions by developers about trying to reverse-engineer the API:

• https://gist.github.com/kuang-byte/d6b5940853cffeeebd39bbe595952b51
• https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/how-to-scrape-youtube-in-2025 (Sep 2025)