YouTube Shorts Scraper

Scrape YouTube Shorts data at scale — by channel or by search term — without the official YouTube API or any video downloads. The YouTube Shorts Scraper collects rich metadata for every Short (title, views, likes, comments, upload date, channel info, thumbnail and more) and streams it straight to your dataset. Just give it a YouTube channel handle or a search keyword and set how many Shorts you want.

Built on the Apify platform, it comes with proxy rotation, scheduling, a clean API, monitoring, and integrations out of the box — so a one-line input turns into reliable, structured data you can export anywhere.

What can the YouTube Shorts Scraper do?

• 🎯 Scrape Shorts by channel — pass a username (without @) or a channel URL (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/c/Apify).
• 🔎 Scrape Shorts by search term — find Shorts across YouTube for any keyword, no channel needed.
• ⚡ Fast and concurrent — extracts many Shorts in parallel with a configurable concurrency limit.
• 🚿 Streaming output — results land in your dataset the moment they're scraped, so you can consume them while the run continues.
• 💸 Low bandwidth by design — metadata only, never video files. A liteMode option strips the run down to the cheapest possible fetch.
• 📅 Filter and sort — limit results, filter by upload date, and sort channel Shorts by newest, most popular, or oldest.
• 🌍 Proxy rotation — uses Apify residential proxies to scrape YouTube reliably.
• 📦 Export anywhere — download as JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML, or pull via API.

What data can the YouTube Shorts Scraper extract?

Field	Description
title	Title of the Short
url	Direct link to the Short (youtube.com/shorts/...)
viewCount	Number of views
likeCount	Number of likes
commentCount	Number of comments
uploadDate	Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD)
duration	Length in seconds
channel / channelUrl	Channel name and link
channelFollowerCount	Subscriber count of the channel
description, tags, categories	Text metadata
thumbnail, width, height	Thumbnail URL and video dimensions

Why scrape YouTube Shorts data?

YouTube Shorts is one of the fastest-growing short-form video formats, and its public metadata is a goldmine for:

• 📈 Creator and competitor analysis — track which Shorts perform best by views and engagement.
• 🧠 Content research — discover trending topics and formats in any niche via search-term scraping.
• 📊 Social media monitoring — follow a channel's output over time on a schedule.
• 🤖 Datasets for AI/ML — build training or analytics datasets of short-form video metadata.

How to scrape YouTube Shorts

You can run the YouTube Shorts Scraper in a few clicks — no coding required:

1. Click Try for free to open the YouTube Shorts Scraper.
2. Add one or more channels under Name(s) of the channel, or enter a Search term.
3. Set Maximum number of shorts to control how many results you get.
4. (Optional) Set Scrape shorts published after [date] and choose a Sort order.
5. Click Start and watch results stream into the Output tab.
6. Export your data as JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML — or grab it through the Apify API.

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube Shorts?

This Actor uses a pay-per-event pricing model, so you pay for the data you actually get rather than for runtime. The main charge is per Short written to your dataset, with a small per-run start fee and an optional surcharge when you filter by date.

To keep costs down:

• Use liteMode when you only need core fields (id, title, views, thumbnail) — it uses almost no proxy bandwidth.
• Keep maxResultsShorts tight to scrape only what you need.
• NEWEST sorting is the cheapest because it stops as soon as it has enough results.

Check the pricing shown on the Actor's page for exact per-1,000-result rates on your plan.

Input

The YouTube Shorts Scraper has the following input options. Click the Input tab for the interactive form.

Field	Type	Description
channels	array	Channel usernames (without @) or links. Required unless searchTerm is set.
searchTerm	string	Search YouTube for Shorts matching this term. If set, channels is optional.
maxResultsShorts	integer	Max Shorts per channel / search term.
oldestPostDate	string	Only Shorts uploaded on/after this date (YYYY-MM-DD or a number of days). Forces NEWEST sort.
sortChannelShortsBy	string	NEWEST, POPULAR, or OLDEST (channel mode only).
liteMode	boolean	Return lightweight fields only — the cheapest, lowest-bandwidth option.
maxConcurrency	integer	Number of Shorts to extract in parallel.
proxyConfiguration	object	Proxy settings. Defaults to Apify residential.

Input example

{
  "channels": ["MrBeast"],
  "maxResultsShorts": 20,
  "oldestPostDate": "2026-01-01",
  "sortChannelShortsBy": "NEWEST",
  "liteMode": false,
  "maxConcurrency": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Output

You can download the dataset extracted by the YouTube Shorts Scraper in various formats such as JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML. Here's a simplified example of one Short scraped from the input above:

{
  "id": "y1UVAtHALaA",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/y1UVAtHALaA",
  "title": "I Surprised a Random Subscriber With $10,000",
  "viewCount": 231128819,
  "likeCount": 5141203,
  "commentCount": 61000,
  "uploadDate": "2026-05-29",
  "duration": 35,
  "channel": "MrBeast",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
  "channelFollowerCount": 504000000,
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/y1UVAtHALaA/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "width": 2160,
  "height": 3840,
  "isShort": true
}

In liteMode, only id, url, title, duration, viewCount, channel, thumbnail and isShort are returned.

Tips for scraping YouTube Shorts

• 🏎️ Increase maxConcurrency for faster runs on large channels; lower it if you hit rate limits.
• 💰 Combine liteMode with a small maxResultsShorts for the cheapest possible monitoring runs.
• 📅 Use oldestPostDate (e.g. 7 for the last week) to scrape only recent Shorts on a schedule.
• 🔁 Schedule the Actor to track a channel's Shorts over time and feed the data into Slack, Google Sheets, or your database via Apify integrations.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to scrape YouTube Shorts?

Our scrapers are ethical and do not extract any private user data, such as email addresses, gender, or location. They only extract what the user has chosen to share publicly. We therefore believe that our scrapers, when used for ethical purposes by Apify users, are safe. However, you should be aware that your results could contain personal data. Personal data is protected by the GDPR in the European Union and by other regulations around the world. You should not scrape personal data unless you have a legitimate reason to do so. If you're unsure whether your reason is legitimate, consult your lawyers.

Do I need the YouTube API to scrape Shorts?

No. The YouTube Shorts Scraper works without the official YouTube Data API, so there are no API keys, quotas, or Google Cloud setup to manage.

Can I scrape Shorts by keyword instead of by channel?

Yes. Provide a searchTerm and leave channels empty. Search results are filtered to short-form videos on a best-effort basis.

Why are POPULAR and OLDEST sorting more expensive than NEWEST?

YouTube doesn't let tools re-sort a channel's Shorts tab, so for POPULAR and OLDEST the Actor must enumerate the full Shorts list before sorting. NEWEST is native and stops early, making it the fastest and cheapest option.

Some Shorts are missing from search results — why?

YouTube search isn't Shorts-specific, so the Actor filters candidates down to short-form videos (≤ 180 seconds, vertical). A few near-misses can be filtered out. For complete coverage of a creator, scrape by channel instead.

Where can I get help or report a bug?

Open the Issues tab on the Actor's page. We welcome feedback, feature requests, and bug reports, and we're happy to discuss custom solutions.