YouTube Comment Tools

Command-line tools and reference code for YouTube comments, built on the YouTube Data API v3. Find the comments a channel never answered, export a video's comments to CSV or JSON, and work out what the API quota allows. Read-only: an API key is all you need, and nothing is ever posted.

These are the open building blocks behind ReplyDial, a hosted tool that gives YouTube creators one inbox of every unanswered comment, drafts a reply for each in their voice, and posts only what they approve. Don't want to run anything? The same checks are free in the browser at replydial.com/tools, no sign-in.

Contents

• The tools
• Quick start
• 1. Unanswered comments
• 2. Export comments to CSV or JSON
• 3. API quota calculator
• Replying to the comments you find
• Use it as a library
• Guides for developers
• The hosted version
• FAQ
• Roadmap

The tools

Command	What it does	Needs	Quota cost
yt-comments unanswered	Counts and lists comments with no reply from the channel, across its recent videos	API key	about 22 units per channel
yt-comments export	Exports every comment on a video (and its replies) to CSV or JSON	API key	1 unit per 100 comments
yt-comments quota	Estimates the daily quota a reply workflow uses, and the most replies a project can post	nothing	none

Zero dependencies. Node 20 or newer. Every tool is also a plain function you can import. None of them writes to YouTube.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/rahulwagh/youtube-comment-tools.git
cd youtube-comment-tools
export YOUTUBE_API_KEY=your_key      # PowerShell: $env:YOUTUBE_API_KEY = "your_key"
node bin/yt-comments.mjs unanswered @RahulWagh

Or without cloning:

npx github:rahulwagh/youtube-comment-tools unanswered @RahulWagh

No API key yet? It takes two minutes: docs/getting-credentials.md. The key only reads public data; there is no sign-in and no access to your channel.

1. Unanswered comments

How many recent comments on a channel have no reply from the channel itself, and on which videos.

yt-comments unanswered @RahulWagh

Rahul Wagh (@rahulwagh) · 104,000 subscribers
0 unanswered of 151 recent comments (0%) on the last 20 videos

Quota used: 22 units.

That is a real run on the author's own channel. On a channel with a backlog the output has this shape (example numbers):

Example Channel (@example) · 82,000 subscribers
410 unanswered of 597 recent comments (69%) on the last 20 videos

    82  How to choose your first cloud certification
    74  A free roadmap for data engineers
    66  Five mistakes I made in my first DevOps job

Quota used: 22 units. Answer them with drafts you approve: https://replydial.com

Option	Meaning
--videos <n>	How many recent videos to scan (default 20)
--list	Also print each unanswered comment with a direct link
--deep	Exact count: fetch all replies on long threads (1 extra unit per thread)
--json	Machine-readable output, including every unanswered comment

How it decides. A comment thread is unanswered when none of its replies were written by the channel owner. Comments the owner wrote are skipped. The API returns at most five replies inline, so on a long thread where the owner answered late the default mode can over-count; --deep fetches the rest and is exact. Details in src/unanswered.mjs.

Use cases

• A creator's weekly sweep: see which videos have questions waiting before sitting down to answer.
• Before hiring a community manager: measure the backlog first.
• Agencies and sponsors: check how responsive a channel is to its audience from public data.
• Your own dashboards: --json into a cron job, track the number over time.

The same check runs in the browser, free and without sign-in: replydial.com/tools/unanswered-checker.

2. Export comments to CSV or JSON

Every comment on a video, newest first, with replies under the comment they belong to.

yt-comments export https://youtu.be/DQk8HOVlumI --replies all --out comments.csv
yt-comments export DQk8HOVlumI --format json > comments.json

Exported 482 rows to comments.csv. Quota used: 4 units.

Columns: comment_id, parent_id, type, author, author_channel_id, text, likes, reply_count, published_at, updated_at, url

Option	Meaning
--format <csv|json>	Default csv (UTF-8 with BOM, opens cleanly in Excel and Google Sheets)
--replies <none|inline|all>	inline (default) includes up to five replies per thread at no extra cost; all fetches every reply
--limit <n>	Stop after n top-level comments
--out <file>	Write to a file instead of standard output

Safe for spreadsheets. Cells that start with =, +, - or @ are prefixed with ', so a comment like =HYPERLINK(...) is shown as text instead of being run as a formula (CSV injection). Handles start with @, so authors carry the prefix too; spreadsheets hide it.

Use cases

• Find the questions: filter the text column for ? and sort by likes.
• Plan the next video: search the export for "can you make", "please cover", "next video".
• Research and sentiment analysis: feed the JSON to your own scripts or an LLM.
• Archive: keep a copy of the discussion before unlisting or deleting a video.

3. API quota calculator

Every Google Cloud project gets 10,000 YouTube API units a day. Reading 100 comments costs 1 unit; posting one reply costs 50. This shows what a workflow really uses.

yt-comments quota --replies 20 --videos 20 --refreshes 6

Reading comments       132 units  (6 refreshes × 22)
Posting replies      1,000 units  (20 × 50)
Total per day        1,132 units  = 11.3% of 10,000

With this reading pattern one project can post at most 197 replies a day.

Operation	API method	Units
Post a reply	comments.insert	50
Read up to 100 comment threads on a video	commentThreads.list	1
Read up to 100 replies of one thread	comments.list	1
List up to 50 uploads	playlistItems.list	1
Look up a channel	channels.list	1
Search (avoid it)	search.list	100

Why this matters for anyone building on comments: a tool that posts for many users shares one quota across all of them, so "reply to everything" tools hit the wall at about 200 replies a day in total. More in docs/quota.md. Interactive version: replydial.com/tools/quota-calculator.

Replying to the comments you find

This toolkit stops at finding. It contains no code that posts, on purpose.

Posting a reply through the API looks like one call (comments.insert), but doing it properly for real users takes much more:

What it takes	Why
OAuth with youtube.force-ssl, verified by Google	It is the only scope that can post; unverified apps are capped at 100 users and show a warning (guide)
A person approving every reply	Required by the API Developer Policies; unattended replies are what the spam policy targets (guide)
Pacing, daily and per-video caps, duplicate checks	So a channel never looks like a bot
A quota extension	One project can post about 200 replies a day in total (guide)
Encrypted token storage, disconnect, deletion	Limited Use and privacy obligations

That is the product: ReplyDial lists every unanswered comment on your channel, drafts a reply for each in your voice, and posts the ones you approve with one tap each. Free for 7 days, no card.

If you are building your own app, the three guides linked in the table are the map.

Use it as a library

Everything the CLI does is an importable function with no dependencies.

import { createClient, checkUnanswered, exportComments, estimateQuota } from "youtube-comment-tools";

const yt = createClient({ apiKey: process.env.YOUTUBE_API_KEY });

const report = await checkUnanswered(yt, "@RahulWagh", { videos: 20 });
console.log(report.unanswered, "unanswered of", report.scanned);

for await (const row of exportComments(yt, "DQk8HOVlumI", { replies: "inline" })) {
  if (row.type === "comment" && row.text.includes("?")) console.log(row.author, row.text);
}

console.log(yt.units, "quota units used");
console.log(estimateQuota({ repliesPerDay: 40, refreshesPerDay: 10 }).percent, "% of the daily quota");

Install straight from GitHub: npm install github:rahulwagh/youtube-comment-tools

Module	Exports
src/youtube.mjs	createClient, getChannel, listUploads, parseChannel, parseVideo, COST, YouTubeError
src/unanswered.mjs	checkUnanswered, classifyThread
src/export.mjs	exportComments, csvLine, csvCell, COLUMNS
src/quota.mjs	estimateQuota

Run the tests with npm test (Node's built-in runner; the API is faked, no key needed).

Guides for developers

Written from shipping an app on these APIs, including Google's OAuth verification.

Guide	What it answers
Getting an API key	Two minutes in the Cloud Console; what a key can and cannot see
Which OAuth scope posts a comment	Why it is youtube.force-ssl, how to ask for it late, sensitive vs restricted, what verification checked
Quota	Unit costs, how to read cheaply, when you need the extension form
Policies: what you may automate	The Developer Policy clauses and the spam policy, applied to comment tools
Use cases	Recipes: weekly sweep, question mining, video ideas, dashboards

Longer write-ups on the ReplyDial blog:

• YouTube Data API: which OAuth scope do you need to post a comment
• Automate YouTube comments: what is allowed, what gets channels in trouble
• What YouTube Studio's comment tools can and cannot do
• How to find every unanswered comment on your YouTube channel
• Best YouTube comment tools in 2026: an honest comparison

The hosted version

This repository is the toolkit. ReplyDial is the product built on the same foundations, for creators who want the result rather than the code.

	This repository	ReplyDial
Find unanswered comments	Last N videos, from the command line	Whole channel, one inbox, newest first, on your phone
Remember what you dismissed	No	Yes, across devices
Draft replies	No	AI drafts in your voice, per comment
Post replies	No (read-only)	One click per approved reply, paced and capped
Setup	Your own API key	Sign in with Google; access verified by Google
Price	Free, MIT	Free plan; paid plans from $12 a month, 7-day trial

Start with the free checker, no sign-in: replydial.com

FAQ

Is this an official Google or YouTube project? No. It uses the public YouTube Data API v3 and follows the YouTube API Services Terms. YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC.

Does the read-only part need access to my channel? No. unanswered and export use an API key and read the same public comments anyone can see on youtube.com.

Can it reply to comments? No. The toolkit is read-only on purpose; see Replying to the comments you find. For a fast, human-approved reply workflow use ReplyDial.

Why does the count differ slightly from YouTube Studio? The default mode reads the newest 100 threads per video and up to five replies per thread. Use --videos, and --deep for exact answers on long threads. Held and spam comments are not visible to an API key.

Can I get comments from private or members-only videos? Not with an API key. Those need the channel owner's sign-in, which this toolkit does not do.

How do I avoid running out of quota? Read with commentThreads.list (1 unit per 100), never search.list (100 units), and cache. Run yt-comments quota for your numbers.

Roadmap

• Publish to npm (npx yt-comments)
• export for a whole channel or playlist
• unanswered --since <date> for a weekly diff
• questions: list only comments that ask something
• Python port of the read-only tools

Ideas and bug reports are welcome in issues. If this saved you an afternoon, a star helps other developers find it.

Contributing, security, licence

• CONTRIBUTING.md: how to run the tests and what kinds of changes fit
• SECURITY.md: how to report a vulnerability
• MIT License

Author

Built by Rahul Wagh. I have run a DevOps channel on YouTube since 2020 (104k subscribers) and answered comments by hand for years before building ReplyDial. More on the infrastructure side at jhooq.com.