YouTube First Comment Finder

What the first comment finder shows

Paste a video or Shorts link and you get:

• The oldest comment still visible, with its author, its text and a link to it on YouTube.
• How soon after upload it was posted: within a minute, after 4 minutes, after 3 days.
• The earliest ten comments, in order, so you can see who showed up first.
• Whether the answer is complete: on a video with more comments than we can read, it says so instead of guessing.

How to find the first comment on a YouTube video

1. Copy the video's link. Shorts, live replays and unlisted videos all work; private videos do not.
2. Paste it above and press Find first comment.
3. Read the label on the result. First comment still visible means we read every public comment. Oldest comment we could reach means the video is too busy to read in full.

YouTube itself has no "oldest first" sort. On the watch page you can only choose Top comments or Newest first, which is why finding the first comment by scrolling is impractical on anything but a small video.

Why the true first comment is sometimes impossible to find

Be wary of any tool that promises the first comment on every video. Two things get in the way, and they apply to everyone:

• Reading depth. YouTube's API returns comments newest first, 100 at a time. We read back through up to 2,000. On a video with 200,000 comments, the first one is far beyond that, so the result is the oldest of the newest 2,000, and the page says so.
• Missing comments. Deleted comments, comments held for review and comments flagged as likely spam are never returned. If the real first comment was removed, nobody outside YouTube can see it any more.

For most videos under about 2,000 comments, the answer is complete: it is the earliest public comment that still exists. Posting times are when the comment was first written, even if it was edited later.

What creators use it for

• Thank your earliest viewers. The first people to comment are often your most loyal ones. Pinning or replying to them costs nothing.
• See how fast your audience arrives. A first comment within a minute of upload means subscribers are watching for you; hours later means most views come from elsewhere.
• Settle a "first!" argument or a first-commenter giveaway fairly, with timestamps.

To search the rest of the comments by keyword or username, use the YouTube comment search. To keep a copy of the whole comment section, use the comment exporter.