YouTube Analytics API

Two APIs sit under the same documentation and get confused with each other. The Analytics API answers targeted queries: you ask for particular metrics and dimensions over a date range, and filtering and sorting happen before the data comes back. The Reporting API handles bulk, where you schedule a job and YouTube produces daily files for you to download and process yourself. Both use OAuth, so a tool can only read a channel once its owner grants access. The available data is not identical between them, and figures can lag what Studio shows by a day or so, which explains most disagreements between a third-party dashboard and the app.