YouTube Shorts Scraper - Short Video Data

Scrape YouTube Shorts from public channel URLs and export structured short-video metadata in one run. Get the short title, URL, views, duration, thumbnail, channel name, channel id, channel URL and source URL. Export to JSON/CSV/Excel, run on a schedule, call via API, or connect to Make, Zapier or n8n.

What is the YouTube Shorts Scraper?

YouTube Shorts is one of the fastest-moving content surfaces on the web. Brands, creators, agencies and researchers need a practical way to monitor what channels publish without manually opening every Shorts tab. This actor turns one or more public YouTube channel Shorts pages into clean datasets you can analyze, compare or sync into another workflow.

The actor uses yt-dlp flat extraction. It does not download videos. It only reads public short-video metadata, which keeps runs lightweight and practical for repeatable monitoring.

What data does it extract?

• Short metadata: short id, title, URL, duration, view count and thumbnail.
• Channel metadata: channel name, channel id, channel URL, handle and follower count when available.
• Source context: the Shorts URL that produced each row.

Input

Paste one or more YouTube channel URLs or Shorts tab URLs into channelUrls. If you paste a normal channel URL, the actor automatically checks the /shorts tab. Set maxResults to control how many Shorts are returned per channel.

Example input

{
  "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@Apify/shorts"],
  "maxResults": 25
}

Output

Each dataset row can include:

{
  "channel": "Apify",
  "channel_id": "UCTgwcoeGGKmZ3zzCXN2qo_A",
  "channel_url": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTgwcoeGGKmZ3zzCXN2qo_A",
  "channel_handle": "@Apify",
  "channel_follower_count": 14800,
  "short_id": "P1jBbKrD_Po",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P1jBbKrD_Po",
  "title": "Apify went flying through the sky...",
  "view_count": 597,
  "duration_seconds": 23,
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/...",
  "source_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@Apify/shorts"
}

Use cases

📱 Short-form competitor monitoring: Track which Shorts competitors publish and compare titles, thumbnails and view counts over time.

🎬 Creator research: Find which short-video topics and formats are appearing across creator channels in your niche.

📈 Social analytics: Export Shorts metadata into a dashboard and monitor output cadence, view counts and content angles.

🧲 Influencer prospecting: Build shortlists of active Shorts creators and enrich their channel URLs later with contact or website data.

🧠 Trend discovery: Watch a group of channels weekly and surface newly posted Shorts for manual review, tagging or AI summarization.

Workflow ideas

Create one saved task for each niche, competitor set or client. Run it weekly and export the dataset to a spreadsheet or database. Compare new short ids against previous runs to detect fresh content. For agencies, combine Shorts metadata with comment scraping or transcript extraction when a specific short needs deeper analysis.

Because every row includes source channel context, you can run several channels in one task and still filter the output later. This is useful for social media teams watching a portfolio of brands or for researchers comparing publication patterns across many creators.

Reliability notes

The actor does not use a YouTube API key and does not download media. It extracts public metadata. YouTube may change page behavior, and some channels may not have a Shorts tab or may expose only limited metadata.

For large monitoring jobs, split channel lists into separate tasks. That makes retries easier and keeps run logs clear.

Data quality tips

Use public channel URLs or direct Shorts tab URLs. Handles such as https://www.youtube.com/@Apify are supported because the actor automatically checks the /shorts tab. If a channel changed its handle, use the current public URL shown by YouTube.

Shorts metadata can be sparse compared with long-form video pages. Some rows may have a title and views but no duration, or a thumbnail but limited channel detail. The actor keeps those rows because even partial Shorts metadata is useful for monitoring publication cadence and discovering new short-form content.

For competitive analysis, keep one task per market or client. That makes it easy to compare a consistent set of channels over time, spot newly published Shorts, and avoid mixing unrelated niches in the same dataset.

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-result pricing. You are charged for each short pushed to the dataset, plus a tiny actor-start event.

FAQ

Does it download Shorts videos?

No. It only extracts metadata.

Does it need a YouTube API key?

No. It uses public metadata extraction through yt-dlp.

Can I use normal channel URLs?

Yes. If the URL does not already include /shorts, the actor appends it automatically.

Can I scrape multiple channels?

Yes. Add multiple channel URLs in one run.

Does it include views?

It returns view_count when YouTube exposes it for the Shorts page.

Can I schedule it?

Yes. Save a task and run it daily, weekly or monthly to monitor new Shorts.

Is it legal?

This actor extracts publicly available metadata. You are responsible for using the output lawfully, respecting YouTube's terms, copyright, privacy rules and compliance requirements.

How is this different from a normal channel scraper?

It focuses on the Shorts tab and short-form videos, which are often analyzed separately from long-form uploads.

Does it include comments or transcripts?

No. This actor extracts Shorts metadata. Use a comments or transcript actor separately when you need deeper analysis for a specific short.

Can I use it for influencer research?

Yes. It is a discovery and monitoring step: find active Shorts creators, then review or enrich promising channels separately.

You might also like

• YouTube Search Results Scraper - scrape videos by keyword
• YouTube Comments Scraper - export public comments
• YouTube Transcript Scraper - extract transcripts
• YouTube Playlist Extractor - export playlist videos

Keywords

YouTube Shorts scraper, YouTube Shorts API, YouTube short video data, Shorts metadata extractor, YouTube creator research, short-form video scraper, YouTube channel Shorts, social media monitoring, influencer discovery, YouTube trend research.