YouTube Shorts Scraper — Views, Likes, Comments & Hashtags

YouTube Shorts Scraper extracts Shorts from youtube.com — a channel's Shorts tab, a hashtag feed, a keyword search with the Shorts filter, or a list of Short links — and returns one clean row per Short: exact views, likes, comment count, publish time, length, description, hashtags, sound, category and channel. It needs no YouTube API key and no login, and you pay per Short saved.

This Actor is the Shorts-only edition of our YouTube Videos Scraper, which covers regular videos, playlists and channel profiles. If you only care about vertical short-form video, start here: the input is built around Shorts sources and every record carries the Shorts-specific fields (sound, comment switch, vertical thumbnail).

What data does it return?

Field	Example	Notes
shortId, url	-62C9R_41Sc, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-62C9R_41Sc	always
title	From the Moon to the 50-Yard Line	always
viewCount	47711	exact with details; rounded (47K) in fast mode
likeCount	902	null when the creator hides likes
commentCount, commentsDisabled	711, false	comments switched off → commentsDisabled: true, commentCount: null
publishedAt	2026-10-05T23:21:46.000Z	ISO 8601, UTC
durationSeconds	39
description, hashtags	#ArtemisII #MoonJoy	e-mails and phone numbers are removed from descriptions
channelName, channelHandle, channelId, channelUrl	NASA, @NASA, UCLA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ
soundTitle	Original Sound	the audio shown on the Short
category, keywords, isFamilySafe	Science & Technology, [...], true	from YouTube's metadata
thumbnailUrl	https://i.ytimg.com/vi/<id>/frame0.jpg	vertical first frame
sourceType, sourceInput, positionInSource	channel, @NASA, 1	where the Short was found and its rank in that feed
detailsFetched, scrapedAt	true, ISO time

Use cases

• Creator and competitor tracking — pull the latest or most popular Shorts of any channel and follow views, likes and comments over time with a schedule.
• Trend research — read a hashtag feed (#recetas, #gymtok, #booktok) to see which formats, sounds and lengths get traction this week.
• Influencer discovery — search a niche keyword with the Shorts filter and collect the channels behind the best-performing clips.
• Content and AI datasets — titles, descriptions, hashtags and engagement numbers as structured JSON for dashboards, LLM pipelines or model training on public metadata.
• Campaign reporting — paste the links of sponsored Shorts and get their current numbers in one table.

How to use it

1. Fill one or more sources: Channels, Hashtags, Search keywords or Single Short URLs.
2. Set Max Shorts (total) and, optionally, Max Shorts per channel / hashtag / search.
3. Optional: channel order (Latest, Popular, Oldest) and Only Shorts published after (2026-10-01 or 30 days).
4. Run it and download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read it through the API.

Input example: two channels, newest Shorts from the last 30 days

{
  "channels": ["@NASA", "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast/shorts"],
  "channelSort": "latest",
  "publishedAfter": "30 days",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "maxItemsPerSource": 50
}

Input example: hashtag feed plus a Shorts search

{
  "hashtags": ["recetasfaciles"],
  "searchQueries": ["cooking hacks"],
  "maxItems": 60,
  "region": "MX"
}

Input example: fast mode for a quick view count snapshot

{
  "channels": ["@NASA"],
  "channelSort": "popular",
  "includeDetails": false,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Fast mode skips the per-Short detail request: you get ID, title, rounded views and thumbnail (and the channel, for channel inputs) in a fraction of the time.

Output example

A real record from a local test run on 19 October 2026 (description shortened):

{
  "shortId": "-62C9R_41Sc",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-62C9R_41Sc",
  "title": "From the Moon to the 50-Yard Line",
  "description": "From the Moon to the 50-yard line. Six months ago, NASA astronaut Christina Koch flew ... #ArtemisII #FlyEaglesFly #MoonJoy",
  "hashtags": ["#ArtemisII", "#FlyEaglesFly", "#MoonJoy"],
  "viewCount": 47711,
  "likeCount": 902,
  "commentCount": null,
  "commentsDisabled": true,
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-05T23:21:46.000Z",
  "durationSeconds": 39,
  "channelName": "NASA",
  "channelHandle": "@NASA",
  "channelId": "UCLA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@NASA",
  "soundTitle": "Original Sound",
  "category": "Science & Technology",
  "keywords": [],
  "isFamilySafe": true,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-62C9R_41Sc/frame0.jpg",
  "sourceType": "channel",
  "sourceInput": "@NASA",
  "positionInSource": 1,
  "detailsFetched": true,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-19T17:44:27.214Z"
}

A SUMMARY record in the key-value store lists how many Shorts each source gave, how many details were loaded, the proxy used and any errors.

Pricing

Pay per event: US$2.80 per 1,000 Shorts saved (US$0.0028 each). The price is the same with or without details, and proxy costs are included.

• 100 Shorts ≈ US$0.15
• 1,000 Shorts = US$2.80
• 10,000 Shorts = US$15

Shorts filtered out by the date filter or skipped as duplicates are not charged. If you set a maximum cost per run, the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

How it compares

• YouTube Data API v3: official, but needs a Google Cloud key and daily quota, has no "Shorts tab" or hashtag-feed listing, and does not tell you which uploads are Shorts. This Actor reads the same public pages a visitor sees.
• Other Shorts scrapers in the Store: the most used ones charge about US$3–4 per 1,000 Shorts. This one costs US$2.80 and returns exact numbers (57,949,054 instead of "57M") when details are on.
• Limits: YouTube decides how deep a hashtag or search feed goes. In our tests a hashtag feed gave 140+ Shorts over 4 pages, and channel tabs (48 Shorts per page) and Shorts searches kept paging normally. The Actor stops when YouTube stops sending pages.

Integrations

Call it from the Apify API, the JavaScript or Python client, or schedule it in Apify Console. Connect the results to n8n, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets, Airtable or a webhook. AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other MCP clients) can discover and run it through the Apify MCP server, e.g. "get the 20 most viewed Shorts of @NASA".

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape YouTube Shorts? The Actor reads only public metadata that YouTube shows to logged-out visitors. Channel names and descriptions can still be personal data when a channel belongs to a private person, so laws such as GDPR, CCPA or Chile's Ley 21.719 may apply to how you store and use them; e-mails and phone numbers are stripped from descriptions. The videos themselves belong to their creators. This is not legal advice.

Do I need a proxy? No setup needed. The Apify datacenter proxy is used by default; if YouTube blocks it twice in a row, the run switches to Apify residential proxy (country = region) for the rest of the run.

Why is likeCount empty for some Shorts? The creator hid the like count; YouTube does not publish it.

Can I get the comments themselves? No. This Actor returns the comment count only, not comment text or commenter data.

Does it download the video files? No, only metadata and the thumbnail URL.

Which languages work? Any language/region. Exact numbers come from the details and do not depend on the language; rounded counts in fast mode are parsed most reliably with language: en.

Changelog

• 2026-10-19 — First version: channel Shorts tab (latest / popular / oldest), hashtag feeds, Shorts search, single Short URLs, per-Short details, date filter, fast mode, pay per Short.

En español

YouTube Shorts Scraper extrae Shorts públicos de YouTube sin API key ni login: la pestaña Shorts de un canal (recientes, populares o antiguos), el feed de un hashtag, una búsqueda con filtro Shorts o una lista de enlaces. Por cada Short entrega vistas exactas, likes, cantidad de comentarios, fecha de publicación, duración, descripción (sin correos ni teléfonos), hashtags, sonido, categoría y datos del canal. Permite filtrar por fecha ("30 days" o "2026-10-01") y tiene un modo rápido sin detalles. Cobra US$1,50 por cada 1.000 Shorts guardados, con proxy incluido. Para videos largos, listas y perfiles de canal usa nuestro YouTube Videos Scraper.