YouTube Shorts Scraper
Pricing
from $0.005 / actor start
YouTube Shorts Scraper
Scrape YouTube Shorts from any channel or search query. Get titles, view counts, thumbnails, video IDs, and channel info. Fast HTTP-only extraction, no browser needed. No login required.
Pricing
from $0.005 / actor start
Rating
0.0
(0)
Developer
kane liu
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1
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1
Monthly active users
a day ago
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Pull every Short from any YouTube channel — or search Shorts by keyword — in one run.
- ✅ Scrape from the fastest-growing video format on YouTube — 200 billion Shorts views per day worldwide
- ✅ Get titles, view counts, thumbnails, channel info, and direct Shorts URLs
- ✅ Download as Excel, CSV, or JSON — no API key, no login, no coding required
- ✅ Pay only for what you use: $0.001 per Short, no subscription
- ✅ Free $5 Apify credit on signup = ~5,000 Shorts to start with
Tracking what Shorts your competitors are posting, which topics are trending, or which of your own Shorts are getting the most views? This pulls all of that into a spreadsheet in seconds — no scrolling through the YouTube app one Short at a time.
What you can do with it
1. See what Shorts your competitors are posting
Want to know every Short that MrBeast, a competitor brand, or any creator has published? Type the channel URL and get back a complete list with titles, view counts, and thumbnails — sorted so you can see which ones went viral and which ones didn't.
To run this, you fill in just two fields:
What you enter:
| What | Example |
|---|---|
| Channel URL | https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast (or any channel @handle) |
| How many Shorts | 100 |
Click Start. A few seconds later, the Actor has pulled every Short from that channel and returned a clean table:
What you get back:
| Title | Views | Channel | Thumbnail | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wait for it... 🤯 #science | 14.2M | MrBeast | view | watch |
| I Gave Away $1,000,000 | 8.7M | MrBeast | view | watch |
| … | … | … | … | … |
Sort by views to see what's working. Compare across multiple channels to spot content patterns. Download as Excel, CSV, or JSON, or pipe into Google Sheets via Make or Zapier.
2. Research trending Shorts in your niche
Before you plan your next batch of Shorts, see what's already getting views in your topic. Search a keyword, get back every matching Short with view counts, and instantly know which angles and formats are resonating.
What you enter:
| What | Example |
|---|---|
| Search keywords | cooking tips or fitness motivation or react tutorial |
| How many Shorts | 200 |
What you get back:
| Title | Views | Channel | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60-second pasta hack 🍝 | 5.1M | Tasty | watch |
| This changed my morning routine | 3.8M | Doctor Mike | watch |
| … | … | … | … |
Sort by views to find the top performers. Look for patterns in titles (questions? hooks? emojis?), formats (tutorial? reaction? before/after?), and which channels dominate the niche. This is your content research done in 30 seconds instead of 3 hours of scrolling.
3. Track which Shorts are going viral across multiple channels
Run this Actor against 5-10 competitor channels at once and compare which Shorts crossed 1M views, which crossed 10M, and how fast. This is competitive intelligence for content teams — know what's working in your space before you invest production time.
What you enter:
| What | Example |
|---|---|
| Channel URLs | 5 competitor channels (paste all at once) |
| How many Shorts | 200 per channel |
What you get back (up to 1,000 Shorts across all channels):
| Title | Views | Channel | Posted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Impossible trick shot 🎯 | 22M | Dude Perfect | [watch] |
| The $1 vs $1,000,000 hotel | 18M | MrBeast | [watch] |
| 3 meals under $5 | 9.4M | Joshua Weissman | [watch] |
| … | … | … | … |
Run weekly with Apify's built-in Scheduler and diff the results — you'll spot which channels are accelerating, which topics are peaking, and which formats consistently outperform.
4. Build a content calendar from competitor Shorts data
Planning your own Shorts content? Pull the last 500 Shorts from channels in your niche, sort by view count, and extract the top 20 titles + formats as templates for your own content calendar. This is how content teams reverse-engineer what works without guessing.
What you enter:
| What | Example |
|---|---|
| Channel URLs | 3-5 channels in your niche |
| How many Shorts | 500 per channel |
What you get back:
A table of 1,500-2,500 Shorts with titles and view counts. Export to Google Sheets, sort by views descending, and the top 50 titles are your swipe file — proven hooks, formats, and topics that already got millions of views in your niche.
Cost for a 2,500-Short research run: about $2.505. Less than a coffee for an entire quarter's worth of content ideas backed by real performance data.
5. Use it from ChatGPT, Claude, or no-code automation
Ask your AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor) "show me the top 50 Shorts from MrBeast sorted by views" — it runs this Actor and returns real data right in the conversation. Also works as a "Run Actor" step in Make, n8n, and Zapier.
Connect the Apify MCP server once (configuration in the developer section below), and from then on just ask in plain English:
What your assistant gets back:
| Title | Views | Channel | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wait for it... 🤯 | 14.2M | MrBeast | [watch] |
| I Survived 100 Days | 11.5M | MrBeast | [watch] |
| … | … | … | … |
Follow up naturally — "which ones have over 10M views?" or "show me just the titles" — your assistant filters without re-running.
How to use (no code required)
- Click "Try for Free" at the top of this page
- Paste a YouTube channel URL (supports @handles) or type a search keyword
- Set how many Shorts you want (default 50, up to 5,000)
- Click Start — results appear in seconds, ready to download as Excel, CSV, or JSON
That's the whole workflow — paste, wait, download. If you've ever scrolled through someone's Shorts tab on YouTube, you already know what this returns. The difference is you get all of them in a sortable spreadsheet instead of swiping one at a time.
No API key needed. No login. No Google Cloud setup. Just your Apify token.
The $5 free Apify credit you get on signup covers ~5,000 Shorts — enough to research an entire competitive landscape before spending anything.
What you get back
Each Short comes back as one row in a table:
- Video title — the Short's title including hashtags and emojis
- View count — both as a number (14200000) and human-readable text ("14M views")
- Channel name, channel ID, and channel URL — who posted it
- Thumbnail URL — 1080×1920 vertical thumbnail image, downloadable
- Direct Shorts URL — one-click link to watch it on YouTube
- Source — whether it came from a channel scrape or a keyword search
Each result set comes back as a table you can download as Excel, CSV, or JSON, or pipe into any downstream tool through Zapier or Make.
Data sources
All data comes from YouTube's publicly accessible pages — no login, no API key, no authentication. Every run is a live fetch, so results reflect what YouTube is showing at that moment.
YouTube Shorts is the platform's fastest-growing format, with 200 billion daily views globally (as of 2026). This Actor pulls data from any channel's Shorts tab or from YouTube's Shorts search results.
Pricing
Pay per Short. Cheapest YouTube scraper on Apify.
| What triggers a charge | Cost |
|---|---|
| Actor start (each run) | $0.005 |
| Each Short scraped | $0.001 |
To give you a feel for real-world costs:
Real-world cost examples:
| Scenario | Shorts | Total cost |
|---|---|---|
| Quick channel check: one creator's latest Shorts | 50 | $0.055 |
| Niche research: trending Shorts for 2 keywords | 200 | $0.205 |
| Competitive audit: 5 channels × 200 Shorts | 1,000 | $1.005 |
| Full content research: 5 channels × 500 Shorts | 2,500 | $2.505 |
The cost scales linearly. No tier thresholds, no surprise jumps.
$5 free Apify credit = ~5,000 Shorts — enough for a massive competitive research pass before paying anything.
How this compares:
| Tool | Price | What you get | What you don't get |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube Data API v3 (Google) | Free, 100 searches/day hard cap | Official API | No Shorts-specific endpoint; quota wall |
| Bright Data YouTube | $250 minimum order | Raw dataset | Enterprise minimum, no Shorts-specific filter |
| VidIQ / TubeBuddy | $9–$159/mo | Creator dashboards | No bulk Shorts data export |
| Our YouTube Scraper | $0.002/video | Full videos + transcripts | For long-form; Shorts Scraper is 2x cheaper + Shorts-optimized |
| This Actor | $0.001/Short | Shorts-specific data, pay-per-use, no subscription | — |
No subscription. No quota. $0.001 per Short. Start there.
Connect to your tools
Use this Actor from any of the major no-code and automation tools:
| Platform | How to connect |
|---|---|
| Make.com | Search "Apify" → "Run Actor" → use Actor ID lentic_clockss/youtube-shorts-scraper |
| n8n | Add Apify node → "Run Actor" → same Actor ID |
| Zapier | Apify integration → "Run Actor" trigger |
| ChatGPT / Claude / Cursor | Connect via Apify's MCP endpoint — your AI assistant calls this Actor directly |
| LangChain, Python, custom code | Via Apify SDK or direct API call |
The most common setups:
- With ChatGPT or Claude: connect once via MCP, then ask "pull all Shorts from @MrBeast sorted by views" — your assistant runs it and returns the table in the conversation.
- With Make or Zapier: schedule a weekly run for competitor channels and pipe new Shorts into Google Sheets or Slack.
When to use something else
| If you need… | Use this instead |
|---|---|
| Full-length YouTube videos (not Shorts) | YouTube Scraper — handles long-form + transcripts |
| Transcripts / subtitles from Shorts | YouTube Scraper with transcript mode — Shorts Scraper doesn't extract captions |
| TikTok videos instead of YouTube Shorts | A dedicated TikTok scraper |
| Facebook / Instagram ad creatives | Facebook Ad Library Scraper |
| Local business data | Google Maps Scraper |
FAQ
Q: Do I need a YouTube API key? A: No. This Actor works through publicly accessible YouTube pages — no API key, no Google Cloud account, no quota system.
Q: How fresh is the data? A: Every run is a live fetch. If a creator posted a new Short 10 minutes ago, you'll see it.
Q: Can I get 5,000+ Shorts in one run? A: Yes. The max is 5,000 per channel or search query. For larger datasets, run multiple queries and combine the output.
Q: Does this include view count history? A: No — it returns the current view count at the time of the run. To track growth over time, schedule weekly runs and compare the numbers.
Q: Why use this instead of the regular YouTube Scraper? A: Two reasons: it's half the price ($0.001 vs $0.002 per result) and it's optimized for Shorts — it targets the Shorts tab and Shorts search specifically, so you don't get long-form videos mixed in.
Q: Can I search and scrape channels at the same time?
A: Yes. Set both channelUrls and searchQueries in the same run — the Actor runs all of them and deduplicates the results by video ID.
Related Actors
- YouTube Scraper — full-length videos + transcripts + channel scraping
- Google Maps Scraper — local business data from Google Maps
- Facebook Ad Library Scraper — competitor ad creatives from Meta
- Stealth Web Scraper — scrape Cloudflare-protected sites
→ Browse all Actors: apify.com/lentic_clockss
Also Available
- Direct API:
https://opendata.best/api/v1/data— use with any HTTP client and your API key - Postman Collection: Fork and test — pre-built requests with example responses
- GitHub: Collection source files — import JSON into any API client
