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On a schedule

Track competitor YouTube channel stats in Airtable

Every Monday, each YouTube channel listed in an Airtable table gets a new row with subscribers, total views, video count and growth since last week.

Runs
On a schedule
Apps
Airtable, YouTube
AI
Not needed
Access
YouTube API key; Airtable data.records:read, data.records:write

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every Monday, read the channel IDs in my Channels table in Airtable, fetch subscribers, views and video count from YouTube, and add a dated row to my Weekly stats table with the change since last week.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

Knowing how fast other channels in your niche are growing helps you judge your own numbers. Checking each channel page by hand every week is dull, and the numbers are gone the moment they change.

This reads a list of channels from Airtable and adds a dated row for each one every Monday. Over a few months the table becomes a growth history you can chart, filter and share.

It suits creators benchmarking against peers, agencies reporting on a client's competitors and marketing teams deciding where to spend on sponsorships.

What you get out of it

  • History YouTube does not keep for you

    Public channel pages only show today's numbers. A weekly row in Airtable keeps the past, so you can see when a competitor's growth sped up.

  • Edit the list without touching code

    Add or remove a channel by editing the Channels table. The next Monday run picks up the change.

  • Publishing pace in one column

    The new videos count shows who is uploading weekly and who has gone quiet. That context explains a lot of growth differences.

  • Ready for Airtable charts

    Because each row has a week and a channel, Airtable's chart and grouping views work without extra setup.

  • Only public data

    A YouTube API key reads public statistics. No one needs to grant access to their channel.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. You list the YouTube channels you want to watch in an Airtable table.

  2. Every Monday ClickRuntime reads that list and looks up each channel's subscribers, total views and number of videos.

  3. It works out the change since last week and how many videos each channel published.

  4. A dated row per channel is added to a stats table, so Airtable charts and views show the trend.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Airtable
  • Connect YouTube

What you get

RunsOn a schedule
Track competitor YouTube channel stats in Airtabletoday, 9:00Succeeded
Airtable · Weekly stats tableWeek: 2026-11-09 · Channel: Northwind Analytics Subscribers: 48,200 (+1,150) Total views: 3,912,400 (+86,300) Videos: 214 (+2 this week)

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
  • Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other Airtable and YouTube steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
track_competitor_youtube_channel_stats_in_airtable.pyexample
from datetime import date
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state

BASE = "https://api.airtable.com/v0/appXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"

def at(method, table, **kw):
    r = http.request(method, f"{BASE}/{table}", headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('airtable', 'work')}"}, **kw)
    r.raise_for_status()
    return r.json()

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    ids = [r["fields"]["Channel ID"] for r in at("GET", "Channels", params={"fields[]": "Channel ID"})["records"]
           if r["fields"].get("Channel ID")]
    stats = []
    for i in range(0, len(ids), 50):
        stats += http.get("https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels", params={
            "part": "snippet,statistics", "id": ",".join(ids[i:i + 50]), "key": credentials.secret("YOUTUBE_API_KEY")}).json().get("items", [])
    last, now, rows = state.get("last") or {}, {}, []
    for ch in stats:
        s = ch["statistics"]
        cur = {"subs": int(s.get("subscriberCount", 0)), "views": int(s["viewCount"]), "videos": int(s["videoCount"])}
        prev = last.get(ch["id"], cur)
        rows.append({"fields": {"Week": date.today().isoformat(), "Channel": ch["snippet"]["title"], "Channel ID": ch["id"],
                                "Subscribers": cur["subs"], "Subscriber change": cur["subs"] - prev["subs"],
                                "Views": cur["views"], "View change": cur["views"] - prev["views"],
                                "Videos": cur["videos"], "New videos": cur["videos"] - prev["videos"]}})
        now[ch["id"]] = cur
    for i in range(0, len(rows), 10):
        at("POST", "Weekly stats", json={"records": rows[i:i + 10], "typecast": True})
    state.set("last", now)
    return {"channels": len(rows)}

FAQ

Common questions

Where do I find a channel ID?
Open the channel, choose About, then Share channel and Copy channel ID. It starts with UC. Paste it into the Channel ID column of your Channels table.
Why are subscriber numbers rounded?
YouTube's public API rounds subscriber counts for larger channels, the same way the channel page does. Views and video counts are exact, so they are the better week-to-week measure.
Can it list the titles of the new videos?
Yes. Your assistant can add a step that fetches each channel's uploads from the past week and writes their titles into a long text field on the same row.
What permissions does it need?
YouTube API key; Airtable data.records:read, data.records:write. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it runs (on a schedule). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Track competitor YouTube channel stats in Airtable” from your assistant

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