# How to collect comments for research

https://aicommentexporter.com/collect-comments-for-research/

Paste each video or post link below and export its comments to CSV, Excel or JSON. Each row has the comment id, author, text, likes, date, language (where the platform gives it) and, for replies, the comment it answers. YouTube comments come from YouTube's official Data API; the other platforms' public comments are read through a data provider. Note the date and the counts in your methods section, because platforms don't hand out every comment.

Tool on the page: [YouTube Comment Exporter](https://aicommentexporter.com/youtube-comment-exporter/)

## Step by step

1. **Pilot for free**: Paste a link to see the comment count and the first 500 comments, and download those as a CSV to test your coding scheme.
2. **Export the full set**: Export every comment, with replies if you need threads, up to 1,000,000 rows a post (300 points per 1,000 rows, $3 at the base rate). Several posts: the bulk page takes 20 links at once.
3. **Keep your own copy**: Files are deleted from our side after 30 days, as YouTube's policies require. Save them to your own storage straight away.
4. **Write down what you collected**: The date of export, the platform's count and the rows you got. The table below shows how much each platform handed out in our tests.

## How much each platform hands out (measured)

| Platform | Source | What you get | Test |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube | Official Data API | Every comment and reply the API returns | Nov 13, 2026: 1,915 comments, 1,915 rows, 16 s |
| TikTok | Public comments via a data provider | About 9 in 10 top-level comments | Nov 14, 2026: 97% of a 4,565 count, with replies |
| Instagram | Public comments via a data provider | Repeated comments dropped | Nov 14, 2026, public posts and reels |
| X | Public replies via a data provider | Fewer than X's count; X holds some back | Nov 14, 2026: 327 of 429 (76%) |
| Reddit | Whole thread via a data provider | Count includes deleted comments nobody can read | Nov 14, 2026: 76 readable of 108 |

## Ethics and good practice

- Check what your ethics board or IRB asks for when you study public comments; many ask you to remove or replace usernames in anything you publish.
- Quote sparingly: a quoted comment can be searched back to its author.
- Keep the comment ids and links in your data so others can check your sample, and say which date it was collected on, since comments get deleted.

## Questions

**Is there a student discount?** No, but small studies fit in the free viewer, and the 100 points every new account gets export about 330 comments.

**Can I get comments from many videos of one channel at once?** Paste up to 20 links on the bulk page. Collecting a whole channel automatically isn't offered.

**Which columns are in the file?** platform, post_url, comment_id, parent_id, type, author, author_url, text, likes, reply_count, published_at, edited_at, language, buying_intent, comment_url.

Updated 2026-11-14.

---

AI Comment Exporter (https://aicommentexporter.com/). Prices: https://aicommentexporter.com/pricing/. Every page: https://aicommentexporter.com/llms.txt. Not affiliated with YouTube, Google, TikTok, Instagram, Meta, X or Reddit.