I'm using the YouTube Data API to search for channels that meet a specific subscriber count range (e.g., between 100,000 and 500,000 subscribers). However, the API consumes a lot of quota units because it searches through multiple channels, including many that don't fit my criteria, before returning a few suitable ones.
For example, I make a search request using youtube.search().list to find channels based on a keyword. After retrieving the results, I manually check the subscriber count of each channel using the youtube.channels().list method, which further consumes quota. If I search 10 channels and only 3 fit the subscriber count range, I've used 10 units, 7 of which were wasted on channels outside my target range.
Here’s a minimal reproducible example:
python
import requestsAPI_KEY = 'YOUR_API_KEY'def search_youtube(query, max_results=10): url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search' params = {'part': 'snippet','q': query,'type': 'channel','maxResults': max_results,'key': API_KEY } response = requests.get(url, params=params) return response.json()def get_channel_details(channel_id): url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels' params = {'part': 'statistics','id': channel_id,'key': API_KEY } response = requests.get(url, params=params) return response.json()# Sample query and channel processingquery = 'Minecraft'search_results = search_youtube(query)for item in search_results.get('items', []): channel_id = item['id']['channelId'] channel_details = get_channel_details(channel_id) subscriber_count = int(channel_details['items'][0]['statistics']['subscriberCount']) if 100000 <= subscriber_count <= 500000: print(f"Channel: {item['snippet']['title']}, Subscribers: {subscriber_count}")Here's the link to my full code on Pastebin.
Question:Is there a more efficient way to filter channels by subscriber count from the start, or to minimize API quota usage? Can I adjust my search parameters or use a different method to reduce the number of unnecessary API calls?
Any suggestions or best practices would be greatly appreciated!