YouTube Shorts Super Scraper — Professional YouTube Shorts Data Extraction

Professional YouTube Shorts scraper that extracts structured data from Shorts posted by any YouTube channel. Get video URLs, titles, views, likes, publish timestamps, and essential channel details for research, analytics, and monitoring — with no API quotas.

Key Features

• Channel Shorts Extraction: Crawl the Shorts tab of one or multiple channels
• Engagement Metrics: Collect views, likes, and comment availability
• Content Metadata: Titles, publish timestamps, thumbnails, and hashtags
• Channel Signals: Channel name, URL, subscribers, and verification flag
• High-Performance HTTP Scraper: Fast axios + cheerio approach (no headless browser)
• Continuation Handling: Follows YouTube continuation tokens to fetch more results
• Date Filtering: Optional cutoff by ISO date or relative span (e.g., 7 days)
• Export Options: JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel, and via Apify dataset APIs

Input Parameters

Configure your Shorts extraction with the following input options:

{
  "channels": ["nasa", "@vsauce", "https://www.youtube.com/@RanaHamzaSaifRHS"],
  "maxResultsShorts": 25,
  "oldestPostDate": "2025-06-03",
  "sortChannelShortsBy": "NEWEST",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

Fields:

• channels (array, required): Channel usernames (with/without @) or full channel URLs
• maxResultsShorts (integer): Maximum Shorts per channel (default: 25)
• oldestPostDate (string): Include only Shorts on/after this date; supports ISO (YYYY-MM-DD) or relative (e.g., 7 days, 2 weeks)
• sortChannelShortsBy (enum): NEWEST | POPULAR | OLDEST (sorting availability on Shorts tab varies by channel/UI)
• proxyConfiguration (object): Apify proxy settings; default useApifyProxy: false. Set to true to reduce blocking and enable geotargeting.

Output Data Structure

Each scraped Short includes consistent video, channel, and context fields:

{
  "title": "ASMR satisfying sounds #shorts",
  "translatedTitle": null,
  "type": "short",
  "id": "gnuiMgTzKMQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gnuiMgTzKMQ",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gnuiMgTzKMQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "viewCount": 1180,
  "date": "2025-06-24T10:01:00.000Z",
  "likes": 198,
  "location": null,

  "channelName": "Coco Creator Rainbow",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3N1VbltR6aREupzvJ8y-sw",
  "channelUsername": "rainbowicecream9780",
  "collaborators": null,
  "channelId": "UC3N1VbltR6aREupzvJ8y-sw",
  "channelDescription": "Thank you so much!",
  "channelJoinedDate": "Aug 9, 2021",
  "channelDescriptionLinks": [],
  "channelLocation": "United States",
  "channelAvatarUrl": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/...=s160-c-k...",
  "channelBannerUrl": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/...=w2560-fcrop...",
  "channelTotalVideos": 193,
  "channelTotalViews": 917769889,
  "numberOfSubscribers": 1390000,
  "isChannelVerified": false,
  "inputChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@rainbowicecream9780",
  "isAgeRestricted": false,

  "aboutChannelInfo": {
    "channelDescription": "Thank you so much!",
    "channelJoinedDate": "Aug 9, 2021",
    "channelDescriptionLinks": [],
    "channelLocation": "United States",
    "channelUsername": "rainbowicecream9780",
    "channelAvatarUrl": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/...=s160-c-k...",
    "channelBannerUrl": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/...=w2560-fcrop...",
    "channelTotalVideos": 193,
    "channelTotalViews": 917769889,
    "numberOfSubscribers": 1390000,
    "isChannelVerified": false,
    "channelName": "Coco Creator Rainbow",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3N1VbltR6aREupzvJ8y-sw",
    "channelId": "UC3N1VbltR6aREupzvJ8y-sw",
    "inputChannelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@rainbowicecream9780",
    "isAgeRestricted": false
  },

  "duration": "00:00:26",
  "commentsCount": 0,
  "text": "",
  "translatedText": null,
  "descriptionLinks": [],
  "subtitles": null,
  "order": 1,
  "commentsTurnedOff": false,
  "fromYTUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@rainbowicecream9780/shorts",
  "isMonetized": null,
  "hashtags": [],
  "formats": [],
  "isMembersOnly": false,
  "input": "https://www.youtube.com/@rainbowicecream9780",
  "fromChannelListPage": "shorts"
}

Popular Use Cases

• Trend Discovery: Track recent Shorts to monitor trending formats and topics
• Competitive Intelligence: Benchmark competitor Shorts output and engagement
• Brand Monitoring: Capture brand mentions and reactions from short-form content
• Market Research: Aggregate short video feedback and audience signals
• Content Strategy: Analyze titles, thumbnails, cadence, and hashtag usage

Capabilities

• Scrapes Shorts from channel Shorts tabs (/@handle/shorts)
• Resolves per-Short details via watch/shorts fetch
• Detects both reelItemRenderer and shortsLockup* data structures
• Follows continuation tokens to paginate results
• Normalizes output with consistent channel and video fields

Legal and Ethical Guidelines

• Scrapes only public data from YouTube
• Do not collect private or personal data
• Follow YouTube Terms of Service and applicable laws (GDPR/CCPA)
• Respect rate limits; use responsibly and ethically

Technical Notes

• Axios + Cheerio (no puppeteer) for speed and low overhead
• Randomized UA headers, retry-aware continuation fetches
• Output normalized by src/utils/outputFormatter.js
• Optional time-based filtering via oldestPostDate after fetch

Quick Start

1. Install dependencies: npm install
2. Run locally: npm start
3. Provide input via Apify UI or local test_input.json

Example test_input.json:

{
  "channels": ["nasa", "@vsauce"],
  "maxResultsShorts": 10,
  "oldestPostDate": "7 days",
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": false }
}

Support

• Review input and output schema under .actor/
• Use Apify dataset APIs to export JSON/CSV/Excel
• Open an issue or reach out for feature requests

Our Scraper Collection

Explore a comprehensive suite of social media and video scrapers designed for analytics, research, and automation.

Instagram

• Instagram Post Super Scraper — Posts + metrics
• Instagram Reels Super Scraper — Reels metadata and performance
• Instagram Profile Super Scraper — Profiles, posts, stats
• Instagram Comments Super Scraper — Comment threads and counts
• Instagram Hashtag Super Scraper — Posts by hashtag

TikTok

• TikTok Videos Super Scraper — Video + profile metadata

YouTube

• YouTube Super Scraper — Videos, Shorts, Streams, subtitles, analytics
• YouTube Comments Super Scraper — Comments and engagement
• YouTube Video Transcript/Details Scraper — Deep metadata + transcripts

Facebook

• Facebook Page Super Scraper — Page posts, reactions, metadata

Twitter/X

• Twitter/X Tweet Scraper — Tweets and engagement

Notes

• All scrapers output to Apify Dataset; export JSON/CSV/Excel via Console or API.
• Enable Apify Proxy in inputs (where available) to reduce blocks and geotarget.

About Muhammad Noman Riaz

Built by Muhammad Noman Riaz — focused on reliable, scalable data extraction tools.

• GitHub: https://github.com/Nomanriaz786
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/muhammad-noman-riaz1/
• Apify: https://apify.com/muhammad_noman_riaz

License

Apache-2.0