YouTube Shorts Scraper - Fast & Cheap

Get the YouTube Shorts of any channel, or the Shorts YouTube returns for any search, as clean structured rows. Paste channel URLs, handles or search queries and the Actor returns one row per Short with its title, views, thumbnail and link. Switch on Include details to also get exact views, likes, publish date and channel for every Short. Schedule it and each run flags the Shorts that are new since the previous one.

No browser, no proxies on your side, no YouTube API key and no daily quota: the Actor reads the same internal endpoints the YouTube website uses, so it is fast and cheap. You pay $0.001 per Short returned.

What you get

One Dataset row per Short:

• title, url (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/<id>), id, thumbnailUrl.
• views and viewsText: rounded in listings (47M views), exact with Include details (47,071,907).
• With Include details: likes, likesText, publishedAt (YYYY-MM-DD), channelName, channelId, channelUrl.
• For channel rows: channelName, channelUrl, channelSubscribers.
• source, kind, query: where the row comes from.
• isNew: true when the Short was not in the previous run of that channel or query.

A channel that does not exist produces a single row with an error field and is not charged.

How to use it

1. Open the Input tab.
2. In Channels paste one per line: https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast, @MrBeast or a channel id.
3. Optionally add Search queries such as cooking hacks to get the Shorts YouTube shows for them.
4. Set Max Shorts per channel or query (default 50) and switch on Include details if you need exact views, likes and dates.
5. Click Start and export the rows as JSON, CSV or Excel.
6. To follow creators or topics, schedule the Actor; new Shorts come with isNew: true.

Input

{
  "channels": ["https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"],
  "queries": ["cooking hacks"],
  "maxShorts": 100,
  "includeDetails": true
}

Field	Description
channels	Channel URLs, @handles or channel ids.
queries	Search texts; results use YouTube's Shorts filter.
maxShorts	Per channel or query, 1 to 1,000. Default 50.
includeDetails	Exact views, likes, publish date and channel per Short. Default off.

Up to 50 channels and queries per run.

Output example

{
  "source": "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast/shorts",
  "kind": "channel",
  "query": null,
  "id": "CEJXqm2eiJ0",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CEJXqm2eiJ0",
  "title": "What’s Inside My Briefcase?",
  "viewsText": "47,071,907 views",
  "views": 47071907,
  "likesText": "815K",
  "likes": 815000,
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-27",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CEJXqm2eiJ0/sardefault.jpg",
  "channelId": "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
  "channelName": "MrBeast",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast",
  "channelSubscribers": 520000000,
  "isNew": false,
  "timestamp": "2026-10-07T20:00:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

Pay per event, no subscription:

• Short scraped: $0.001 per Short row, details included when you switch them on. 1,000 Shorts cost $1.
• New Short: $0.002 per Short flagged as new in a scheduled run.

Channels or queries that cannot be read are free. Compare with YouTube Shorts scrapers at $2.40 per 1,000 Shorts.

Use it as an API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/aolmo~youtube-shorts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"channels": ["@MrBeast"], "maxShorts": 50, "includeDetails": true}'

You can also call it from AI agents through the Apify MCP server. For regular videos use aolmo/youtube-videos, for comments aolmo/youtube-comments and for transcripts aolmo/youtube-transcript.

FAQ

Why are views rounded? YouTube shows rounded counts in Shorts listings. Switch on Include details to get the exact number from each Short's page.

How far back does it go? As far as the channel's Shorts tab scrolls, up to 1,000 Shorts per channel per run.

Does it download the videos? No, it returns data and links only.

Where is the data stored between runs? In a Key-Value Store of your account named micro-saas-state-youtube-shorts, one key per channel or query. Delete it to start fresh.