YouTube Shorts Scraper (Official API) — By Keyword & Channel

Bring your own free YouTube API key. Get YouTube Shorts from any channel (YouTube's own Shorts list, not a guess) or by keyword, with views, likes, comments, duration, tags and publish date, via the official YouTube Data API v3. No scraping, no blocks. $1.20 per 1,000 Shorts.

Bring your own free YouTube API key and get YouTube Shorts from the official YouTube Data API v3, with no scraping, no proxies and no blocks. Two ways in, in one run:

• Shorts by channel: paste channel URLs, @handles or channel IDs. Each channel's Shorts come from YouTube's own Shorts playlist for that channel, so the list is exact (Shorts only, no long videos, no guessing from the Shorts tab), newest first. If a channel has no Shorts playlist, its uploads are checked by duration instead, and every row says which method was used (shortSource).
• Shorts by keyword: search terms run through YouTube search with the short length filter, then each result is checked: only videos of 3 minutes or less that are not live are kept (YouTube allows Shorts up to 3 minutes since October 2024). Optional region, language, date range and sort order.

Every Short comes back as one row with views, likes, comment count, duration in seconds, title, description, tags, publish date, channel name, handle and ID, thumbnails, made-for-kids flag and the youtube.com/shorts/… link. Use it for Shorts analytics, trend and hashtag research, competitor tracking and creator discovery, or feed Sheets, Make, n8n or Zapier.

$1.20 per 1,000 Shorts, under a third of the leading Shorts scraper ($4.00 per 1,000), and no start fee beyond Apify's platform minimum. A channel's 10 newest Shorts cost about 3 of your 10,000 free daily quota units.

Get your free API key (about 60 seconds, no billing account)

1. Open the Google Cloud Console and sign in with any Google account. Create a project (top bar → New project).
2. Go to APIs & Services → Library, search for YouTube Data API v3 and click Enable.
3. Go to APIs & Services → Credentials → Create credentials → API key and copy the key (it starts with AIza).
4. Paste it into the YouTube API key field of this actor and run. The field is a secret input: Apify stores it encrypted, and the actor never logs it or writes it to the output.

You do not need to add a billing account. Each Google Cloud project gets 10,000 free quota units per day, which reset at midnight Pacific Time. If you restrict the key, allow YouTube Data API v3 and leave out HTTP-referrer or IP restrictions, because Apify runs on changing server IPs.

How far your free quota goes

Input	API calls	Quota units	Shorts per day on 10,000 units
channel	channels.list + playlistItems.list (Shorts playlist, 50 per call) + videos.list (stats)	1 per channel + about 2 per 50 Shorts	about 250,000 Shorts
keyword	search.list (50 per page) + videos.list	101 per page of 50 results	about 100 pages (up to 5,000 results)

Keyword search is the expensive call: YouTube charges 100 units per page. The run log shows an estimate before any call is made. If your key runs out (a 403 quotaExceeded error), the actor stops cleanly with a clear message, keeps the Shorts already delivered, and does not charge for the failed call.

Official API only, and your data stays yours

• All data comes from the official YouTube Data API v3 (https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/) using your own key and quota. Nothing is scraped from youtube.com, and there are no proxies, cookies or logins.
• We never hold, share or pool API keys, and no default key is built in. ActorForge sells the API client; the data is fetched under your key.
• ActorForge keeps no copy of API data after the run. Rows go only to your run's dataset, which belongs to you. YouTube's Developer Policies require stored API data to be refreshed or deleted at least every 30 days, so set a retention period on your datasets or re-run to refresh them. Statistics such as view counts change constantly anyway.
• By using this actor you also agree to the YouTube Terms of Service. Google's handling of API requests is covered by the Google Privacy Policy. You can review or revoke your key at any time in the Google Cloud Console, and revoke API access for your Google account at Google security settings.

This actor uses YouTube API Services. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube or Google.

What data does it return?

Every run outputs clean, schema-validated rows like these:

title	channelTitle	channelHandle	publishedAt	durationSec	viewCount	likeCount	commentCount	shortSource	url
Last To Fall Wins	MrBeast	@mrbeast	2026-10-16T16:00:02Z	24	98359162	915977	11485	uush-playlist	https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Y8IJi7iP5vk
Giving $10,000 To A Random Subscriber	MrBeast	@mrbeast	2026-10-09T16:00:01Z	40	45216651	1152310	26486	uush-playlist	https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aNI2jv7lBPQ
What’s Inside My Briefcase?	MrBeast	@mrbeast	2026-09-27T16:00:14Z	40	94781973	1331567	24600	uush-playlist	https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CEJXqm2eiJ0

How much does it cost?

Transparent pay-per-event pricing — you only pay for what you get, and the actor always respects your run budget: set a maximum total charge and it stops cleanly at the cap instead of overrunning.

Event	Price	Charged	Worked example
short-result	$0.0012	per Short row delivered (full details and stats)	1,000 Shorts = $1.20 (streamers/youtube-shorts-scraper: $4.00 per 1,000)
search-page	$0.002	per keyword search page of up to 50 results that returned Shorts (it costs 100 of your quota units)	One keyword, 40 Shorts kept = $0.002 + 40 × $0.0012 = $0.05
apify-actor-start	$0.00005	per run per GB of memory (platform start fee)	One run at 256 MB = $0.0000125

Input options

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
apiKey	string	no	—	Required. Your own free YouTube Data API v3 key (starts with AIza). Get one in about a minute: console.cloud.google.com → create a project → APIs & Services → Library → enable "YouTube Data API v3" → Credentials → Create credentials → API key. No billing account is needed, and the free quota is 10,000 units per day. The key is stored encrypted by Apify, used only for this run's calls to googleapis.com, and never logged or written to the output.
mode	string	no	"shorts"	Always shorts on this listing (Shorts from channels and keywords).
channels	array	no	[]	Channel URLs (youtube.com/@handle, /@handle/shorts, /channel/UC…, /user/name), @handles or channel IDs (UC…). Each channel's Shorts come from YouTube's own Shorts playlist, so the list is exact, newest first (about 2 quota units per 50 Shorts plus 1 per channel). If a channel has no Shorts playlist, its uploads are checked by duration instead.
maxVideosPerChannel	integer	no	100	Newest Shorts per channel. Every 50 Shorts cost about 2 of your quota units.
publishedAfter	string	no	""	Optional date (YYYY-MM-DD): only Shorts published on or after it. For channels, paging stops at older Shorts, saving quota; for keywords, YouTube filters the search.
searchQueries	array	no	[]	Optional search terms. Each is searched with YouTube's "short" length filter (under 4 minutes), and only videos of 3 minutes or less that are not live are kept. Each page of up to 50 results costs 100 of your 10,000 daily quota units.
maxResultsPerQuery	integer	no	50	Search results read per keyword (YouTube returns at most about 500). Each 50 = one search page (100 quota units). Results longer than 3 minutes are dropped and not charged, so you can get fewer Shorts than this.
order	string	no	"relevance"	Sort order for keyword search.
publishedBefore	string	no	""	Optional date (YYYY-MM-DD) for keyword search.
regionCode	string	no	""	Optional 2-letter country code (US, GB, DE …): keyword results available in that country.
relevanceLanguage	string	no	""	Optional ISO 639-1 language code (en, es, de …): keyword results most relevant to that language.

Limits & honest notes

• You need your own free YouTube Data API v3 key (see the 4-step guide above). Without one the run finishes at once with a single free row of instructions, and nothing is charged.
• Quota is per Google Cloud project: 10,000 units/day for free. channels.list, playlistItems.list and videos.list cost 1 unit each, and search.list costs 100. A quotaExceeded error stops the run cleanly; Shorts already delivered are kept, and the failed call is free.
• Channel Shorts come from YouTube's per-channel Shorts playlist (UUSH…). It is a system playlist YouTube does not document, so it could change; if it is missing for a channel, the actor falls back to checking uploads by duration (3 minutes or less, not live) and marks those rows shortSource: duration-heuristic. The fallback scans at most 250 uploads (or 5 × Max Shorts per channel) so a long-form channel cannot eat your quota.
• Keyword results use the duration check, because the API has no Shorts flag in search: a regular video of 3 minutes or less can appear. Results longer than 3 minutes are dropped and never charged, so a keyword can return fewer Shorts than Max search results.
• Only public data the API returns for an API key: no dislike counts (removed by YouTube), no revenue, no watch time, no audio/sound name and no Shorts remix data. Like counts hidden by the creator come back as null.
• Search returns at most about 500 results per keyword (a YouTube limit), and results can differ from what the YouTube app shows.
• You must refresh or delete stored API data within 30 days (YouTube Developer Policies III.E.4). We keep nothing after the run.
• The run's spend limit is respected: each page of Shorts is charged before it is delivered, and the run stops cleanly at the cap. Free rows (type error) cover invalid inputs and channels that are not found.

Related ActorForge actors

• YouTube Scraper (Official API) — Videos, Search & Stats — any video by URL, full search, channels and comments
• YouTube Channel Scraper (Official API) — All Videos & Stats — channel stats plus every upload, long videos included
• YouTube Comments Scraper (Official API) — No Usernames — comments on any Short or video, commenter identities stripped

Changelog

• 2026-10-22 — Initial release: YouTube Shorts by channel from YouTube's own Shorts playlist (duration fallback), Shorts by keyword with the short-length filter and a 3-minute check, full stats via the official YouTube Data API v3 with your own key, clean quota-exceeded stop, pay-per-event billing.

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