YouTube Shorts Scraper — Discovery, Virality & Downloads

Scrape YouTube Shorts from any channel, keyword, hashtag, or Short URL — no login, no API key, no quotas. Get full metadata (views, likes, comments, duration, hashtags, channel stats) plus a viral score and engagement rate on every result, optional comment scraping, and optional 360p video downloads saved straight to Apify storage with a shareable link.

Just paste what you want into one box — the actor auto-detects whether each line is a channel, a keyword, a hashtag, or a Short URL. No modes to configure.

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What does YouTube Shorts Scraper do?

It extracts structured data from YouTube Shorts using YouTube's own internal data API (the same one the website uses), so it's fast and returns exact numbers — not rounded estimates. For every Short you get the title, description, hashtags, exact view/like/comment counts, duration, publish date, thumbnail, and channel details (name, subscribers, verified badge). On top of the raw numbers it computes two metrics incumbents don't give you:

• Viral score = views ÷ channel subscribers. A score above 1 means the Short reached more people than the channel's own audience; above 5 is a breakout hit.
• Engagement rate = (likes + comments) ÷ views, so you can compare how well Shorts land regardless of size.

Run it on the Apify platform and export to JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull results via API.

Why use this Shorts scraper?

• Marketers & creators — find breakout Shorts and high-performing formats by viral score and engagement, not just raw views.
• Trend & competitive research — track any channel's Shorts, or discover Shorts by keyword/hashtag across the whole platform.
• AI & data teams — build clean, tabular training/analysis datasets with exact engagement numbers and (optionally) the video files themselves.
• Agencies — monitor clients' and competitors' Shorts output, comments, and audience reaction in one export.
• Anyone who needs the video — optionally download the 360p MP4 of each Short to Apify storage and share a direct link.

How to use it

1. Add one or more entries to Channels, keywords, hashtags, or Short URLs — for example @MrBeast, cooking tips, #asmr, or a https://www.youtube.com/shorts/… link. Mix and match freely; each line is auto-detected.
2. Set Max Shorts per input (default 10).
3. (Optional) Filter by publish date, choose a sort order, turn on comments, or turn on video downloads.
4. Click Start.
5. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or grab it from the API.

Input

Only startUrls is required. Everything else has sensible defaults.

Scrape a channel's newest Shorts:

{ "startUrls": ["@MrBeast"], "maxResults": 25 }

Discover Shorts by keyword, most popular first:

{ "startUrls": ["cooking tips", "home workout"], "maxResults": 20, "sortOrder": "popular" }

Track a hashtag, last 7 days only:

{ "startUrls": ["#asmr"], "maxResults": 50, "publishedAfter": "7 days" }

Enrich specific Shorts with comments:

{ "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID"], "includeComments": true, "maxComments": 50 }

Scrape a channel and download the videos:

{ "startUrls": ["@mkbhd"], "maxResults": 10, "downloadVideos": true }

Field	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	array of strings	— (required)	Channel handles (@MrBeast), usernames, channel URLs, keywords, #hashtags, or Short URLs. Auto-detected.
maxResults	integer	10	Max Shorts per input entry (1–10,000).
publishedAfter	string	—	Date YYYY-MM-DD or relative (7 days, 1 month, 1 year).
sortOrder	string	newest	newest, popular (by views), or oldest.
includeComments	boolean	false	Also scrape top comments.
maxComments	integer	20	Comments per Short when enabled (1–500).
downloadVideos	boolean	false	Download each Short (360p MP4) to Apify storage; adds videoDownloadUrl.
proxyConfiguration	object	Residential (US)	YouTube blocks datacenter IPs, so residential is used automatically.

Output

Each Short is one dataset row (recordType: "short"). Comments, when enabled, are separate rows (recordType: "comment").

{
  "recordType": "short",
  "videoId": "LgbyEFILLJI",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LgbyEFILLJI",
  "title": "$1 vs $10,000 Cake",
  "description": "",
  "hashtags": [],
  "viewCount": 14785052,
  "likeCount": 418269,
  "commentCount": 8600,
  "durationSeconds": 49,
  "publishedAt": "2026-07-03T16:00:02.000Z",
  "viralScore": 0.0292,
  "engagementRate": 0.02887,
  "channelId": "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
  "channelName": "MrBeast",
  "channelSubscribers": 506000000,
  "channelVerified": true,
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LgbyEFILLJI/oardefault.jpg",
  "captionsAvailable": false,
  "commentsDisabled": false,
  "videoDownloadUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/.../records/video-LgbyEFILLJI.mp4",
  "videoFileSizeBytes": 4521210,
  "videoQuality": "360p",
  "source": "channel",
  "query": "@MrBeast",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-06T10:55:48.718Z"
}

Field	Description
viewCount / likeCount / commentCount	Engagement counts (exact when YouTube exposes them, otherwise the best available value).
viralScore	views ÷ subscribers (>1 = beat the channel's audience).
engagementRate	(likes + comments) ÷ views.
channelSubscribers / channelVerified	Channel size and verification.
hashtags	Hashtags parsed from the description.
captionsAvailable	Whether the Short has subtitles/captions.
videoDownloadUrl	Shareable link to the downloaded MP4 (only if downloadVideos is on).

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube Shorts?

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing — you only pay for what you get:

Event	Price
Short scraped (full metadata + viral score + engagement rate)	$2.50 / 1,000
Comment scraped	$0.40 / 1,000
Video downloaded	$0.012 / MB (a typical Short is ~3–8 MB)

The first 10 chargeable events of every run are free, so you can try it on a real run at no cost.

Typical runs:

• 1,000 Shorts, metadata only → ~$2.50
• 1,000 Shorts + 20 comments each → ~$2.50 + ~$8.00 comments
• 100 Shorts + downloads (~5 MB each) → ~$0.25 + ~$6.00 downloads

(YouTube requires residential IPs, which is why downloads are priced by size — you pay in proportion to the bandwidth used.)

Tips & advanced options

• Mix input types in one run — put channels, keywords, and hashtags together; each is auto-detected.
• Find breakouts — set sortOrder: "popular" and sort/filter your export by viralScore to surface Shorts that punched above the channel's audience.
• Keep runs cheap — leave downloadVideos and includeComments off unless you need them; base metadata already includes viral score + engagement.
• Date filtering — publishedAfter accepts both absolute dates and relative windows like 2 weeks.
• Scheduling — use Apify Schedules to track a channel or hashtag over time; the actor dedupes within a run.
• Downloads — files land in the run's key-value store; the videoDownloadUrl on each row is a direct, shareable link.

Legal & disclaimer

This actor collects publicly available data from YouTube and does not log in or bypass any paywall. You are responsible for how you use the scraped data and for complying with YouTube's Terms of Service, copyright law, and applicable privacy regulations (GDPR/CCPA) — especially when downloading video files or scraping comments that contain personal data. Do not use this actor to infringe creators' rights or republish content without permission.

FAQ & support

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. The actor needs no key, no login, and has no daily quota.

Are the numbers exact? View counts, durations, and publish dates are exact. Like/subscriber/comment counts are exact when YouTube exposes them and otherwise the closest available value (YouTube rounds some publicly).

Why is a channel returning fewer Shorts than expected? maxResults caps per input, and very old Shorts on huge channels are paginated — raise maxResults to go deeper.

Can I download in HD? v1 downloads 360p (fast, small, reliable). Higher resolutions are on the roadmap.

Which regions? Results are fetched from US residential IPs for consistency.

Questions or a feature request? Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab.