YouTube Shorts Scraper

YouTube Shorts Scraper collects YouTube Shorts from channels, hashtags and YouTube search and returns one row per Short with the exact numbers: views, likes, comment count, publish date, title, description, hashtags, and the channel with its subscriber count.

$0.0015 per Short — $1.50 per 1,000. No API key, no YouTube quota, no login, no start fee. Sources that fail and Shorts removed by your filters are free.

What is YouTube Shorts Scraper?

Shorts are YouTube's answer to TikTok, and the YouTube Data API makes them hard to pull: quotas, no hashtag feed, no Shorts filter. This Actor reads the same pages and JSON the YouTube website shows to any visitor and turns them into clean rows. Use it to find viral Shorts in a niche, track competitors' Shorts, collect creators for influencer campaigns, or feed trends to an AI agent.

Three kinds of sources, mixed freely in one run:

• Channels — handle, URL or channel id; the whole Shorts tab.
• Hashtags — #bali, #fitness; the hashtag's Shorts feed.
• Search queries — anything you would type into YouTube, filtered to Shorts.

What is in every row

Field	Meaning
title, url, videoId, thumbnailUrl	The Short
views, likes, comments	Exact counters
publishedAt, dateText	Publish date
description, hashtags	Text under the Short and its hashtags
channelName, channelHandle, channelId, channelSubscribers	Who posted it
source, sourceValue, position	Which channel, hashtag or search it came from

How much does it cost?

Event	Price
Short	$0.0015

• Exact numbers (likes, comments, date) are included in the price.
• Shorts below Minimum views or older than Published after: $0.
• Channels, hashtags or searches that fail: $0 (an error row says why).

Bulk export: what 50,000 rows actually cost

This Actor is built for bulk jobs — hundreds of channels, hashtags or searches in one run, or a daily schedule. There is no fee per run, no fee per page and no proxy charge: you pay for the rows you keep.

Job	This Actor	Most-used Actor in this category
50,000 Shorts across 100 runs	$75	$200
10,000 Shorts a day for a month	$450	$1,200

Checked on the Apify Store on 23 September 2026 against the Actor with the most monthly users in this category ($0.004 per result). Some Actors here ask less per row — this table compares against the one buyers actually use most.

How to use it in three steps

1. Paste channels, hashtags or search queries — one per line.
2. Set Shorts per source, and a Minimum views or Published after filter if you want only the winners.
3. Press Start, then download JSON, CSV or Excel — or call the run from the API, n8n, Make, Zapier or an AI agent.

⬇️ Input

{
  "channels": ["mkbhd", "https://www.youtube.com/@NASA"],
  "hashtags": ["bali", "#fitness"],
  "searchQueries": ["iphone 17 review"],
  "maxShortsPerSource": 50,
  "minViews": 10000
}

⬆️ Output

{
  "type": "short",
  "source": "channel",
  "sourceValue": "mkbhd",
  "videoId": "R6yNUnRXZ64",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R6yNUnRXZ64",
  "title": "iPhone Duo is here",
  "views": 6687652,
  "likes": 191381,
  "comments": 4300,
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-10",
  "description": "What to know about iPhone Duo",
  "channelName": "Marques Brownlee",
  "channelHandle": "@mkbhd",
  "channelId": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
  "channelSubscribers": 21300000,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-23T12:10:46.723Z"
}

Use cases

Find viral Shorts in your niche

A hashtag or a search plus Minimum views — the Shorts that took off, with the channel behind each.

Competitor tracking

Your competitors' channels every week: what they post, what gets views, how likes and comments compare.

Influencer discovery

Every row carries the channel and its subscribers — sort by views per subscriber to find creators punching above their size.

Trend data for AI

Titles, descriptions and hashtags as clean rows through the Apify MCP server or API.

Integrations

Every run is available through the Apify API, and the Actor works out of the box with n8n, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets, LangChain and the Apify MCP server.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. There is no quota either.

How many Shorts can I get from a channel? The whole Shorts tab — thousands for big channels. Hashtags and searches usually give a few hundred per source.

Why is publishedAt sometimes empty? For Shorts published in the last hours YouTube shows only "2 hours ago"; dateText keeps what it shows.

Can I get the transcript or the video file? No — this Actor returns data, not media.

Is this legal? The Actor reads public pages that anyone can open without logging in. Use the data in line with YouTube's terms and your local law.