🎬 YouTube Shorts Scraper — Views, Likes, Audio & Viral Score

What Does YouTube Shorts Scraper Do?

YouTube Shorts Scraper extracts structured data from YouTube Shorts — the short-form vertical video format that's now driving billions of views per day. Unlike general YouTube scrapers, this actor is purpose-built for Shorts and returns Shorts-specific data that no other tool captures: audio/music metadata, engagement rates, and a calculated viral score that tells you exactly how much a Short overperformed relative to the channel's subscriber count.

You can scrape Shorts by keyword search, creator channel, hashtag, or direct video URL. Export to CSV, JSON, or push directly to your pipeline.

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Why Use YouTube Shorts Scraper?

• No API quota limits — YouTube's official API caps you at 10,000 units/day. This actor has no cap.
• Shorts-specific data — returns audio title, audio author, engagement rate, and viral score that general scrapers miss.
• 4 input modes — search keywords, channel URLs, hashtag pages, or direct Short URLs. Mix and match in the same run.
• MCP-ready — structured JSON output with semantic field names, ready to pipe into Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI agent.
• Engagement rate & viral score — built-in calculated fields save you post-processing time.

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What Data Can YouTube Shorts Scraper Extract?

Field	Type	Description
video_id	string	YouTube's 11-character video ID
title	string	Short title
description	string	Full description with hashtags
url	string	Direct URL to the Short
channel_name	string	Creator's channel name
channel_id	string	YouTube channel ID (UCxxx…)
channel_url	string	Creator's channel URL
channel_subscribers	number	Channel subscriber count
view_count	number	Total views
like_count	number	Total likes
comment_count	number	Total comments
duration_seconds	number	Length in seconds
published_at	string	Upload date (ISO 8601)
hashtags	array	Hashtags from title & description
audio_title	string	Sound/music track title
audio_author	string	Sound/music creator
thumbnail_url	string	High-resolution thumbnail URL
engagement_rate	number	(likes + comments) / views
viral_score	number	views / subscribers (>1.0 = viral)
scraped_at	string	Scrape timestamp (ISO 8601)
source_url	string	Discovery URL used

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How to Scrape YouTube Shorts — Step by Step

1. By Keyword Search

Enter search terms to find Shorts about any topic. The actor automatically applies YouTube's Shorts filter so you get only short-form videos, not regular videos.

Example input:

{
  "searchQueries": ["morning routine", "cooking hacks", "gym motivation"],
  "maxResults": 50
}

2. By Creator Channel

Paste the Shorts tab URL of any YouTube channel to get all of their Shorts:

{
  "channelUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast/shorts",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@GordonRamsay/shorts"
  ],
  "maxResults": 100
}

3. By Hashtag

Scrape all Shorts using a specific hashtag:

{
  "hashtagUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/morningroutine",
    "https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/fyp"
  ],
  "maxResults": 30
}

4. By Direct Short URL

Get full details for specific Shorts you already have URLs for:

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID_1" },
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID_2" }
  ]
}

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Understanding the Viral Score

The viral_score field is unique to this actor. It's calculated as:

viral_score = view_count / channel_subscribers

• Score > 1.0 — The Short got more views than the channel has subscribers. Strong viral signal.
• Score > 5.0 — Exceptional breakout performance.
• Score < 0.5 — Below-average performance for this creator's audience.

This is the fastest way to identify which Shorts broke out of a creator's existing audience.

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Understanding the Engagement Rate

engagement_rate = (likes + comments) / views

Industry benchmarks for YouTube Shorts:

• < 1% (0.01) — Low engagement
• 1–5% (0.01–0.05) — Average
• > 5% (0.05) — High engagement — content resonating strongly

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Pricing

This actor uses Pay-Per-Event pricing. You only pay for what you scrape.

Plan	Price per Short
Free	$0.003
Bronze	$0.0025
Silver	$0.002
Gold	$0.0015
Platinum	$0.001
Diamond	$0.0008

Example cost: 1,000 Shorts on the Free plan = $3.00

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Use Cases

Content creators — Analyze what Shorts formats, lengths, and topics get the highest engagement in your niche before you create.

Brand marketers — Find creators producing viral Shorts about topics relevant to your brand for influencer outreach.

Trend analysts — Monitor trending Shorts by hashtag or keyword to spot emerging trends before they peak.

AI / ML teams — Collect structured Shorts metadata at scale for training datasets, content recommendation models, or trend prediction.

Competitive intelligence — See exactly which Shorts your competitors post, how they perform, and what audio/music they use.

SEO & Content Strategy — Identify the top hashtags and audio tracks driving Shorts virality in any niche.

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Integration & Export

Export scraped data, run the scraper via API, schedule and monitor runs, or integrate with other tools.

API example (Node.js):

const { ApifyClient } = require('apify-client');
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('USERNAME/youtube-shorts-scraper').call({
  searchQueries: ['morning routine'],
  maxResults: 20,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Scheduled runs: Set up daily or weekly scraping runs in Apify Console to monitor Shorts trends over time.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does this require a YouTube account or login? No. All data scraped is from public YouTube pages. No credentials needed.

Can I scrape private or age-restricted Shorts? No. Only publicly accessible Shorts can be scraped.

Why are some fields null? YouTube sometimes hides like counts, disables comments, or doesn't show subscriber counts. When data isn't available, the field returns null rather than an incorrect value.

How many Shorts can I scrape per run? There's no hard cap. Use maxResults to control the volume. For very large runs (1,000+), we recommend running multiple smaller jobs.

Is the audio data always available? Audio/music metadata is extracted when YouTube displays it on the Shorts page. Original audio created by the creator may not have a listed track title.

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Technical Notes

• The actor uses a real Chromium browser (via Playwright) to navigate YouTube, avoiding bot detection.
• YouTube data structures update frequently. If you notice missing fields, please report an issue and we'll update the parser.
• For high-volume scraping, residential proxies are recommended via the proxy configuration option.

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Legal Disclaimer

This actor is intended for lawful data collection from publicly available YouTube pages. Users are responsible for compliance with applicable laws, YouTube's Terms of Service, and data protection regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.). Do not use this tool to collect data on private individuals or for any unlawful purpose. Scraping YouTube at high volumes may violate their ToS — use responsibly.