CommentShark vs ExportComments: Where the Free Export Stops

If you have ever tried to pull a YouTube video's comments into a spreadsheet, you have probably landed on ExportComments. It is a genuinely useful, long-running tool that exports comments from several platforms. We build the CommentShark Comment Exporter, so weigh that, but every ExportComments claim below comes from ExportComments' own site, checked July 2026, and the honest summary is that the two tools split on one number: how many comments you can export for free.

Short answer. ExportComments is a solid multi-platform exporter, but its free tier stops at 100 comments per YouTube video, and larger exports push you onto paid plans priced by comment volume. CommentShark's exporter is free up to 1,000 comments (5,000 with a free login), outputs Excel, CSV, and AI-ready text with replies included, needs no API key, and is one tool inside a full comment-management product. If you just hit the 100-comment wall mid-export, that is the difference.

At a glance (checked July 2026)

The honest framing: for a quick pull of any single video's first hundred comments across many platforms, ExportComments does the job for free. The moment you need the whole comment section of a real video, or you want the comments in an AI-ready format to analyze, the free ceiling arrives fast.

Where ExportComments genuinely wins

Credit where it is due. ExportComments has been around a long time, it is reliable, and it covers platforms CommentShark does not touch at all, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, and Reddit. If your job is pulling comments from many networks into spreadsheets and you are fine with paid plans as volume grows, a single multi-platform exporter is a reasonable choice. Its paid tiers scale into the hundreds of thousands of comments, which is more raw export headroom than most creators will ever need.

Where the free export stops

The catch for a YouTube creator is the free ceiling. ExportComments' free export returns up to 100 comments per video with no signup, and anything beyond that moves you to a paid plan sized by comment count (5,000, then 50,000, then 250,000). A hundred comments is a fraction of a single active video, so for real analysis you are paying, and you are paying for export alone: once the CSV is downloaded, the tool's job is finished. It does not help you reply to those comments, hide the scams, or read the room.

How CommentShark's exporter is different

CommentShark's exporter is free up to 1,000 comments with no account, or 5,000 with a free login, and it outputs Excel (.xlsx), CSV, and a copy-ready text format built for pasting into ChatGPT or Claude for analysis. Replies come along inline (up to 5 per thread), and every row carries the author, dates, like count, and a direct link to the comment. There is no API key, no browser extension, and no import wizard. The bigger difference is what surrounds it: the exporter is one tool in a product that also auto-replies to comments, moderates spam and scams, and tracks sentiment, so exporting is step one rather than the whole story.

• Use ExportComments for: quick, small exports across many social platforms, or very high-volume export where you are happy on a paid plan.
• Use CommentShark for: a larger free YouTube export (1,000 free, 5,000 signed in), AI-ready output with replies, and the option to actually reply to and moderate those comments afterward.
• Pricing: both are free to start; CommentShark's exporter stays free to 5,000 comments, and the full product is from $19/month. See our full tool comparison for the wider category.

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