Connect YouTube Analytics to Google Sheets
Pull channel and video performance — views, watch time, subscriber changes, traffic sources and demographics — into your reporting.
Coming soon — join the list to get early access
What you can pull from YouTube Analytics
YouTube Analytics exposes 2 objects you can pull, each as its own job. Every run will pull the records into a flat table, so nested fields arrive as ordinary columns that Google Sheets can sort, filter and total without further work.
Daily performance
Views, watch time and subscriber change per day.
| Column | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| day | dimension | — |
| views | metric | — |
| estimatedMinutesWatched | metric | — |
| averageViewDuration | metric | Seconds |
| subscribersGained | metric | — |
Top videos
Best-performing videos for the period, sorted by views.
| Column | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| video | dimension | Video ID, not title — see the gotcha below |
| views | metric | — |
| estimatedMinutesWatched | metric | — |
| likes | metric | — |
Options you can set
- date_range
- yesterday, last_7_days, last_28_days, last_90_days or custom
- dimensions
- Prefilled by the preset, and editable
- metrics
- Prefilled by the preset, and editable
How it lands in Google Sheets
Google Sheets accepts append and overwrite writes. Overwrite replaces the target range, which suits a snapshot; append adds rows underneath, which suits a log you are accumulating. There is no upsert here, so rows are added or replaced rather than merged.
- Append adds rows below existing content; overwrite replaces the target range.
- No upsert: a spreadsheet has no primary key, so there is nothing to merge on. Use Airtable or Postgres if rows must be updated in place.
- Google caps a spreadsheet at 10 million cells across all tabs. Filter before writing rather than after.
Authentication
You connect YouTube Analytics once through OAuth and the credential is stored server-side, never pasted into a cell or a formula. Only the scopes the connector actually calls are requested — the table below lists each one and what it is for.
What YouTube Analytics is asked for
- yt-analytics.readonly non-sensitive
- Read channel and video performance. Read-only
- userinfo.email non-sensitive
- Label the connection
What is deliberately not requested
youtube.readonly — It would be needed to resolve video titles through the Data API v3, which nothing here calls. Requesting it would be asking for a permission no code uses - so reports return video IDs rather than titles.
Keeping runs incremental
Yes. Each run pulls a rolling date window rather than the whole history.
Because Google Sheets has no upsert, decide what a re-run should mean before you schedule it. Overwrite keeps a current snapshot; append accumulates history and will grow without bound.
Limits and pacing
These are the provider-side ceilings that shape a schedule, not ours. Knowing them up front is the difference between a job that runs quietly every morning and one that starts failing the week your data grows.
| Limit | Value | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Report types Dimension/metric pairs outside it are rejected by the API. | YouTube's documented matrix | YouTube Analytics |
Common gotchas
Most of what goes wrong with a scheduled sync is not a bug — it is a detail of how one side behaves that nobody wrote down. These are the ones that come up for this pair.
Video IDs, not titles
The Analytics API does not expose titles, and the scope that would resolve them is deliberately not requested.
Dimension and metric pairs must match the supported matrix
The presets mirror YouTube's documented report types. Changing a dimension without checking that matrix produces a query the API rejects outright on first use.
An open-ended range beats a padded one
Writing to A2:D is better than A2:D1000 for appends: the padded form reserves rows you may not need and makes the append boundary ambiguous.
Set it up in four steps
- 1
Connect YouTube Analytics
Connect the Google account that owns the channel.
- 2
Connect Google Sheets
Connect your Google account once. Paste a spreadsheet URL or ID.
- 3
Shape the data
Select the columns you want, filter rows, cast types and add computed fields. Everything else is dropped before it reaches the destination.
- 4
Schedule it
Run once, or on a cron. Every run refreshes Google Sheets with the latest YouTube Analytics data.
Do I need an add-on or extension for this?
No. The job runs server-side and writes into Google Sheets through its API, so there is nothing installed in the spreadsheet itself. It keeps running when nobody has the file open, and a copy of the file does not need anything installed to work.
How often does the data refresh?
On whatever schedule you set with a cron expression — hourly, daily, or a specific time on specific days. Each run pulls the latest from YouTube Analytics.
Do I need to write any code?
No. You connect both sides, map the fields in a wizard and set a schedule. Computed fields accept small expressions — abs, round, min, max, len — but there is nothing to host or maintain.
Why are my videos showing as IDs?
The YouTube Analytics API returns bare video IDs. Resolving them to titles needs the Data API v3 and the youtube.readonly scope, which is deliberately not requested — asking for a permission nothing calls would be worse than the inconvenience.
Do I have to give access to my whole Google Drive?
No. Only the spreadsheets scope is requested. The Drive scope that most spreadsheet tools ask for is a restricted scope granting read access to every file you own; it is deliberately not requested here, which is why you paste a spreadsheet URL rather than browsing Drive.
Will this keep working if I copy the sheet?
The job writes to a specific spreadsheet ID, so a copy will not receive data until you point a job at it. Nothing is installed in the file itself, though, so copying never breaks the original.
When will YouTube Analytics be available?
YouTube Analytics is built and waiting on verification. Join the early-access list and we will let you know the moment it opens.
Other sources into Google Sheets
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