YouTube Shorts Scraper 🎬

Extract video metadata from YouTube Shorts in seconds! Just paste your URLs and let the magic happen.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                 │
│   📋 Your Shorts URLs  ──►  🔄 Scraper  ──►  📊 Rich Data      │
│                                                                 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

What Does It Do? 🤔

The YouTube Shorts Scraper is a tool that automatically extracts detailed information from YouTube Shorts videos. Simply provide YouTube Shorts URLs, and it will gather comprehensive metadata about each video—including the title, description, view count, likes, uploader information, thumbnail, and a direct download link.

Think of it as a data collector that saves you time by automatically pulling all the important details from Shorts videos instead of manually checking each one. It's perfect for researchers, content analysts, marketers, or anyone who needs to gather information about multiple Shorts videos quickly.

Here's what information it extracts:

Data Point	Description
🎥 Title	The video's title
📝 Description	Full video description
⏱️ Duration	Length in seconds
🖼️ Thumbnail	High-quality thumbnail URL
👤 Uploader	Channel name & ID
👁️ Views	Current view count
❤️ Likes	Current like count
📅 Upload Date	When it was posted
🔗 Download URL	Direct MP4 link (best quality)

How It Works 🛠️

┌──────────────┐
   │  You paste   │
   │  Shorts URLs │
   └──────┬───────┘
          │
          ▼
   ┌──────────────┐
   │   Scraper    │──── Uses residential proxies
   │   extracts   │     to avoid bot detection
   │   metadata   │
   └──────┬───────┘
          │
          ▼
   ┌──────────────┐
   │  Get clean   │
   │  JSON data   │
   └──────────────┘

Quick Start 🚀

Step 1: Add Your URLs

Paste your YouTube Shorts URLs. They should look like this:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dQw4w9WgXcQ
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/abc123xyz

Step 2: Configure Proxies (Required!)

⚠️ Important: YouTube blocks datacenter IPs. You MUST use residential proxies!

Select Apify Proxy with RESIDENTIAL group for best results.

Step 3: Run & Get Your Data!

Hit that Run button and watch the data flow in.

Input Options ⚙️

Option	Required	Default	Description
urls	✅ Yes	-	List of YouTube Shorts URLs to scrape
proxyConfiguration	✅ Yes	Residential	Proxy settings (residential required!)
maxConcurrency	❌ No	3	How many URLs to process at once (1-10)

Example Input

{
  "urls": [
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dQw4w9WgXcQ" },
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/another-video" }
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  },
  "maxConcurrency": 3
}

Output Format 📤

Each successfully scraped video returns:

{
  "id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Amazing Short Video",
  "description": "Check out this cool video...",
  "duration": 58,
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/...",
  "uploader": "Cool Creator",
  "uploader_id": "@coolcreator",
  "view_count": 1500000,
  "like_count": 125000,
  "upload_date": "20240115",
  "download_url": "https://...",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "success": true
}

If something goes wrong, you'll get a clear error:

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/invalid",
  "success": false,
  "error_code": "VIDEO_NOT_FOUND",
  "error_message": "Video not found or unavailable"
}

Results API (All Mapped Fields) 🔌

Use this endpoint to run the actor and immediately get JSON results with all mapped output fields:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USERNAME~youtube-shorts-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items\
?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN\
&format=json\
&clean=true\
&fields=id,title,description,duration,thumbnail,uploader,uploader_id,view_count,like_count,upload_date,download_url,url,success,error_code,error_message" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "urls": [
      { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dQw4w9WgXcQ" }
    ],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
      "useApifyProxy": true,
      "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
    },
    "maxConcurrency": 3
  }'

This gives you one unified payload for both successful and failed URLs without extra dataset-fetch steps.

Error Codes 🚨

Code	What It Means
INVALID_URL	Not a valid YouTube Shorts URL
VIDEO_NOT_FOUND	Video doesn't exist or was removed
VIDEO_UNAVAILABLE	Video is private or restricted
AGE_RESTRICTED	Video requires age verification
BOT_DETECTED	YouTube flagged the request (try residential proxies!)
RATE_LIMITED	Too many requests, slow down
EXTRACTION_ERROR	Something unexpected went wrong

Tips for Best Results 💡

Tip	Why
🏠 Use Residential Proxies	Datacenter IPs get blocked by YouTube
🐢 Start with low concurrency (3)	Avoid rate limiting
📊 Process in batches	Split large lists into smaller runs
🔄 Retry failures	Some errors are temporary

Pricing 💰

This actor uses pay-per-result pricing:

• You only pay for successfully scraped videos
• Failed extractions are free
• Budget limits are respected automatically

Use Cases 📱

• 📈 Analytics - Track performance of Shorts across channels
• 🔍 Research - Study trending content and patterns
• 📥 Archiving - Save metadata for content you care about
• 🤖 Automation - Feed data into your own tools and workflows

FAQ ❓

Q: Why do I need residential proxies? A: YouTube actively blocks requests from datacenter IPs (like AWS, Google Cloud, etc.). Residential proxies make requests look like they're from regular home users.

Q: How fast is it? A: With concurrency set to 3, expect roughly 1-2 seconds per video. Increase concurrency for faster processing, but watch for rate limits.

Q: Can I scrape regular YouTube videos? A: No, this scraper is specifically designed for YouTube Shorts (/shorts/ URLs only).

Q: What happens if a video is private? A: You'll get a VIDEO_UNAVAILABLE error with success: false.

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Made with ❤️ for the Apify community