YouTube Shorts Scraper

YouTube Shorts Scraper - Shorts of any channel, Shorts search results and single Shorts

The YouTube Shorts Scraper collects YouTube Shorts with their views, titles, links and thumbnails. Point it at a channel to get the channel's Shorts, at a search term to get the Shorts YouTube finds for it, or at single Shorts URLs.

Switch on full details and the YouTube Shorts Scraper opens every Short and adds likes, exact views, comment count, publish date, duration, description, keywords and the channel's subscriber count.

No login, no Google account and no YouTube Data API key. The YouTube Shorts Scraper reads what any logged-out visitor sees.

What the YouTube Shorts Scraper does

For a channel, the YouTube Shorts Scraper opens the channel's Shorts tab and pages through it in the order you pick: latest, most popular or oldest.

For a search term, it opens YouTube's results page, applies YouTube's own Shorts filter and pages through the results.

For a Shorts URL, it reads that Short's page and returns one detailed row. Old saved tasks with Shorts URLs keep working this way.

Who uses the YouTube Shorts Scraper

Short-form video marketers who study which hooks, topics and lengths win views on YouTube Shorts.

Agencies who audit a creator's Shorts before a campaign and compare them with their long-form videos.

Trend researchers who track what Shorts appear for a keyword day after day.

Brands who monitor Shorts about their products and the engagement they get.

Input fields for the YouTube Shorts Scraper

Give channel URLs, Shorts URLs, search terms, or any mix of them. The defaults return 30 Shorts per channel or search.

Field	Type	Default	Meaning
startUrls	array	@MrBeast + one Short	Channel URLs or @handles (their Shorts tab), Shorts URLs (one detailed row each), or a YouTube search URL
searchTerms	array	empty	Keywords searched with YouTube's Shorts filter
maxResults	integer	30	Shorts per channel and per search term
sortBy	select	latest	Channel order: latest, popular or oldest
scrapeShortDetails	boolean	false	Open each Short for likes, comments, dates and more
maxItems	integer	empty	Optional cap on all rows of the run
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify RESIDENTIAL, US	Proxy used for every request

Output of the YouTube Shorts Scraper

Every row of the YouTube Shorts Scraper has the list fields; channel sources add the channel, and details add the rest.

Field	Meaning
videoId, url	Short id and its /shorts/ link
title	Short title
viewCount, viewCountText	Views as a number and as YouTube shows them ("31M views")
thumbnailUrl	Vertical thumbnail
channelName, channelId, channelUrl, channelHandle	Channel (channel sources and detail rows)
likes	Exact like count (details)
commentCountText, commentCount, commentsDisabled	Comments as shown, as a number, and whether they are turned off (details)
publishDate	Exact publish date and time (details)
durationSeconds	Length in seconds (details)
description, keywords, hashtags, category	Text metadata (details)
channelSubscribers	Channel subscribers (details)
sourceType, source, position	What produced the row and its order there
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp

Export the YouTube Shorts Scraper dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel, XML or HTML, or read it through the Apify API.

Example row with details (shortened)

{"videoId": "myZ9kn9MIWQ", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/myZ9kn9MIWQ", "title": "2026 Solar Eclipse @ 50,000 Feet", "viewCount": 255024, "viewCountText": "255K views", "likes": 13724, "commentsDisabled": true, "publishDate": "2026-08-14T09:46:54-07:00", "durationSeconds": 93, "channelName": "NASA", "channelSubscribers": 15100000, "category": "Science & Technology", "sourceType": "channel", "position": 1}

How to run the YouTube Shorts Scraper

Open the YouTube Shorts Scraper, paste a channel URL or type a search term, set maxResults, and press Start.

Leave scrapeShortDetails off for fast lists of Shorts with views. Turn it on when you need likes, comment counts and exact publish dates; it opens one extra page per Short.

Use sortBy: popular on a channel to get its most viewed Shorts first, the quickest way to see what worked for a creator.

Measured speed of the YouTube Shorts Scraper

All numbers come from local test runs of the YouTube Shorts Scraper on a home connection:

• 30 Shorts of a channel plus one detailed Short in 2 to 3 seconds.
• 100 most popular Shorts of a channel in 5 seconds, from 3 pages.
• 24 Shorts with full details (12 from a channel, 12 from a search) in 18 to 25 seconds.

The Shorts tab of @MrBeast listed 48 Shorts per page and the tab of @NASA 40 per page in our tests.

How the YouTube Shorts Scraper works

The YouTube Shorts Scraper loads each page exactly as a logged-out browser does and reads the page configuration from it: client version, visitor data, language and region.

The latest, popular and oldest buttons are the tab's own links, and the Shorts filter for searches is the link the results page publishes. Nothing is typed into the code.

Further pages come from YouTube's internal endpoints with the page's own context and the continuation token of each answer, so YouTube releases do not silently break the YouTube Shorts Scraper.

Once during our tests a channel page arrived without its Shorts tab selected; a reload had it. The YouTube Shorts Scraper reloads up to twice in that case and logs it.

YouTube Shorts Scraper limits, stated plainly

Without details, a Short in a list has only an id, a title, a view label and a thumbnail, because that is all YouTube shows on the Shorts tab and in Shorts search results.

View labels in lists are rounded ("31M views"). Turn on details for the exact view count and the exact like count.

Some channels turn comments off on their Shorts. Then commentsDisabled is true and the comment count is empty; NASA's Shorts were an example in our test.

The YouTube Shorts Scraper reads public Shorts only. A channel without a Shorts tab gives no rows, and the log says so.

YouTube Shorts Scraper pricing

The YouTube Shorts Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing: you pay per dataset row (event "result"), plus the Apify platform usage of your run. The run stops at your maxItems or at the charge limit you set.

Free-plan users get up to 30 rows per run, which is enough to test the YouTube Shorts Scraper on real data. The current price per 1,000 results is on the Pricing tab.

Using the YouTube Shorts Scraper in a workflow

Schedule the YouTube Shorts Scraper daily on your keywords and you have a feed of new Shorts for each topic, ready for a trend dashboard.

Push the rows to Google Sheets, Slack or a database through the Apify integrations, or through Make, Zapier and n8n. A webhook can start your own automation when a run finishes.

Developers call the YouTube Shorts Scraper from Python with the Apify API client:

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("neuro-scraper/youtube-shorts-scraper").call(run_input={"startUrls": [{"url": "@MrBeast"}], "maxResults": 100, "sortBy": "popular"})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["position"], item["viewCount"], item["title"])

What makes a Short work

Run the YouTube Shorts Scraper with details on for a niche, then compare viewCount with durationSeconds, hashtags and the words in title.

Patterns appear quickly: which lengths, which hooks and which hashtags go with the top views. That is evidence for your next script, not a guess.

Shorts and long-form side by side

Run the YouTube Shorts Scraper and the YouTube Channel Scraper on the same channel and you can compare its Shorts with its long-form videos.

Both datasets use the same field names for views, titles and links, so one spreadsheet tab per Actor and a lookup on videoId is all it takes.

What each source returns

A channel source gives the Short's id, link, title, view label and thumbnail, plus the channel's name, id, link and handle on every row, because the YouTube Shorts Scraper reads them once from the channel header.

A search source gives the same Short fields without the channel, because YouTube's Shorts results do not print the channel. Turn on details and the channel, likes and dates are added to every row.

A Shorts URL always gives the detailed row, so a list of known Shorts needs no extra setting.

Downloading the Shorts you found

Pass the url column of a YouTube Shorts Scraper dataset to the YouTube Video Downloader of this family to save the files themselves.

In our test a Short asked for at 480p came back as a 480x854 vertical WebM file of 3.51 MB, the native shape of a Short.

How the YouTube Shorts Scraper counts views

On the Shorts tab YouTube prints labels such as "31M views". The YouTube Shorts Scraper reads the spoken version of that label ("31 million views") and turns it into the number 31000000 in viewCount.

With details on, viewCount is replaced by the exact figure from the Short's own page, for example 255,024 views for the NASA eclipse Short in our test.

Related scrapers

The YouTube Shorts Scraper is part of a family of YouTube and social media scrapers by the same developer.

Actor	What it extracts
YouTube Scraper	Search results and video data by keyword
YouTube Channel Scraper	Channel profile, about data and long-form videos
YouTube Comments Scraper	Comments and replies, Shorts included
YouTube Transcript Scraper	Transcripts of videos and Shorts
YouTube Video Details Scraper	Exact views, likes, dates and tags
YouTube Playlist Scraper	Every video of a playlist
YouTube Video Downloader	Video or audio files, Shorts included
Instagram Reels Scraper	Reels of public Instagram profiles
Facebook Reels Scraper	Reels of public Facebook pages
TikTok Video Details Scraper	Stats of TikTok videos
TikTok Profile Scraper	Public TikTok profile data

Leave a review

If the YouTube Shorts Scraper saved you time, please leave a star rating and a short review on the Actor page. Reviews help other users choose and tell me what to improve.

If a channel or a Short did not work, open an issue with the run link.

Frequently asked questions

Does the YouTube Shorts Scraper need a YouTube API key?

No. The YouTube Shorts Scraper does not use the YouTube Data API and has no quota. It reads public pages like a logged-out visitor.

Can the YouTube Shorts Scraper get all Shorts of a channel?

Yes. Set maxResults above the channel's number of Shorts and the YouTube Shorts Scraper pages through the whole Shorts tab. In tests 100 Shorts came from 3 pages in 5 seconds.

Does the YouTube Shorts Scraper return likes and comments?

Yes, with scrapeShortDetails on. Each Short then gets its exact like count, comment count, publish date and duration.

Can I search Shorts by keyword?

Yes. Put the keyword into searchTerms. The YouTube Shorts Scraper applies YouTube's own Shorts filter, so only Shorts come back.

Why are some view counts rounded?

Lists show YouTube's labels such as "31M views". The YouTube Shorts Scraper converts them to numbers; detail rows carry the exact count.

Can I sort a channel's Shorts by popularity?

Yes. Set sortBy to popular or oldest. These are the Shorts tab's own buttons, so the order matches YouTube.

What happens with a channel that does not exist?

YouTube answers HTTP 404, the YouTube Shorts Scraper logs "channel not found" and moves on to your next source.

Which formats can I export to?

CSV, JSON, Excel, XML and HTML from the console, and the same data through the Apify API and integrations.

Can I mix channels, Shorts URLs and search terms in one run?

Yes. The YouTube Shorts Scraper works through every source in one run, and each row says where it came from in sourceType and source.

How long does a run with full details take?

About one second per Short on a home connection: 24 detailed Shorts took 18 to 25 seconds in our tests. Lists without details are much faster, 100 Shorts in 5 seconds.

Do I need my own proxy for the YouTube Shorts Scraper?

No. The YouTube Shorts Scraper uses Apify's residential proxy by default.