YouTube Shorts Scraper & Channel Email Finder

What does YouTube Shorts Scraper & Channel Email Finder do?

YouTube Scraper collects YouTube videos and Shorts from channels, keyword search results, and single video URLs, with the metrics people actually need: views, likes, comments count, duration, exact publish date, tags, hashtags, description, category, thumbnail, and channel name, handle, subscribers and verified badge. It works as a YouTube Shorts scraper, a YouTube channel videos scraper, and a YouTube search scraper in one Actor.

No YouTube API key, no Google Cloud project, no daily quota. It reads the same data YouTube sends to its own web app, over plain HTTP, so runs are fast and cheap: $1.50 per 1,000 videos, or $2.00 per 1,000 with full details (likes, comments count, tags, exact date).

Optional channel contact rows add each channel's email address (from the About description or its website), Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch and Discord links, website, country, join date and total views: a ready-made list for influencer marketing and creator outreach.

Run it from the Console, call it through the Apify API, schedule it daily, or connect it to Make, Zapier, Google Sheets, Slack or webhooks. Apify handles proxy rotation, retries and monitoring.

What data can you extract from YouTube?

🎬 Video title and URL	🩳 Short or long video	👀 Views
❤️ Likes	💬 Comment count	⏱️ Duration
📅 Published date	📝 Description	#️⃣ Tags and hashtags
🗂️ Category	🖼️ Thumbnail	📺 Channel name and handle
👥 Subscribers	📧 Channel email	🌐 Website
📸 Instagram, TikTok and X links	🌍 Country	📊 Channel total views and video count

Why use this YouTube Shorts scraper and channel email finder?

• Influencer marketing: find creators in a niche through search, then pull their subscribers, recent Shorts performance, and contact email.
• Competitor tracking: schedule a daily run on competitor channels and watch views, likes and comments on every new upload.
• Content research: see which Shorts and videos win for a keyword, sorted by relevance, view count or rating, filtered to the last N days.
• Data and AI pipelines: titles, descriptions, tags and hashtags in clean JSON, CSV or Excel for analysis or model training.
• No quota headaches: the official YouTube Data API allows about 10,000 units a day; search alone costs 100 units per call. This Actor has no quota.

How to scrape YouTube Shorts, channel videos and creator emails

1. Open the Input tab.
2. Add channels (@MrBeast, a channel URL, or a UC... ID), search queries, and/or video URLs.
3. Pick Content type: videos, Shorts, or both.
4. Set Max results per source and, if you want, Only videos newer than (days).
5. Keep Include full video details on for likes, comments count, tags and exact dates.
6. Turn on Add channel contact rows if you need emails and social links.
7. Click Start, then download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.

Input

Every field is described on the Input tab. A typical input:

{
    "channels": ["@MrBeast", "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd"],
    "searchQueries": ["home workout"],
    "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CEJXqm2eiJ0"],
    "contentType": "both",
    "maxResultsPerSource": 50,
    "maxResults": 1000,
    "sortBy": "latest",
    "searchSortBy": "relevance",
    "newerThanDays": 30,
    "includeVideoDetails": true,
    "includeChannelContacts": true
}

• Channels accept @handle, handle, /@handle, /channel/UC..., /c/name and /user/name URLs, or a bare channel ID.
• contentType both reads a channel's Videos and Shorts tabs, each up to maxResultsPerSource.
• sortBy (channels): latest, popular, oldest. searchSortBy: relevance, views, rating.
• newerThanDays keeps only recent uploads. On a channel sorted by latest, paging stops at the first older video, so you only pay for what you keep.

Output

Each video or Short is one row. You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

{
    "resultType": "video",
    "videoId": "rng_yUSwrgU",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rng_yUSwrgU",
    "isShort": false,
    "title": "iPhone 17 Review: No Asterisks!",
    "description": "This is the best iPhone in years. Which can have an interesting effect on the rest of the lineup...",
    "tags": ["iPhone 17", "iPhone 17 review", "iPhone 17 vs", "MKBHD"],
    "hashtags": [],
    "views": 6857189,
    "likes": 174393,
    "commentsCount": 5700,
    "commentsCountText": "5.7K",
    "durationSeconds": 680,
    "durationText": "11:20",
    "publishedAt": "2025-10-01T20:41:40.000Z",
    "publishedAtApproximate": false,
    "category": "Science & Technology",
    "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rng_yUSwrgU/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "channelId": "UCBJycsmduvYEL83R_U4JriQ",
    "channelName": "Marques Brownlee",
    "channelHandle": "@mkbhd",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd",
    "channelSubscribers": 21300000,
    "channelVerified": true,
    "detailsFetched": true,
    "sourceType": "url",
    "sourceInput": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rng_yUSwrgU",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-30T23:25:39.624Z"
}

With Add channel contact rows on, each channel also gets one free row with resultType: "channel":

{
    "resultType": "channel",
    "channelName": "MrBeast",
    "channelHandle": "@MrBeast",
    "channelSubscribers": 519000000,
    "totalViews": 141252796510,
    "videoCount": 1004,
    "joinedDate": "2012-02-19",
    "country": "United States",
    "hasBusinessEmail": true,
    "channelEmail": null,
    "websiteUrl": "https://www.themostdangerousgames.com/",
    "instagramUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/mrbeast",
    "twitterUrl": "https://x.com/MrBeast",
    "facebookUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/mrbeast"
}

Data fields

Field	Description
videoId, url, isShort	Video ID, watch or /shorts/ URL, and whether it is a YouTube Short
title, description, tags, hashtags	Full text and the creator's tags (details)
views, likes, commentsCount	Engagement metrics (likes and comments need details)
durationSeconds, durationText	Length in seconds and as m:ss
publishedAt, publishedAtApproximate	ISO date; exact with details, otherwise converted from "3 days ago" and flagged
category, isLive, isUpcoming	YouTube category and live/premiere state
thumbnail	Highest available thumbnail
channelId, channelName, channelHandle, channelUrl	Channel identity
channelSubscribers, channelVerified	Subscriber count and verified badge
sourceType, sourceInput, position	Which channel, query or URL produced the row, and its rank there
channelEmail, emails, websiteUrl, instagramUrl, tiktokUrl, twitterUrl, ...	Channel rows only

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube?

Pay per result, no subscription, and platform usage is included:

Event	Price
Run start	$0.003 once
Video or Short	$1.50 per 1,000
Full details	+$0.50 per 1,000 (optional)
Channel contact row	Free

So 1,000 Shorts with likes, comments and tags cost about $2.00, and 1,000 list-only rows cost $1.50. Most YouTube scrapers on the Store charge around $5 per 1,000. Apify's free plan credit covers a few thousand results a month. The run stops at your maximum cost per run, so you never pay more than you set.

Tips

• Turn Include full video details off when titles, views, duration and relative dates are enough: it is cheaper and about 20x fewer requests.
• Use Only videos newer than (days) with sortBy: latest for daily monitoring; the run stops paging at the first older upload.
• Search for Shorts with contentType: shorts; the search then uses YouTube's own Shorts filter.
• The same video found by two sources is stored and charged once.
• Each run writes RUN_SUMMARY to the key-value store with per-source counts and any channel that could not be found.

Run it on a schedule

Save your input as a task, then open Schedules in Apify Console and pick how often it runs. Weekly refreshes a creator shortlist. Daily suits tracking a channel's new Shorts. Each run creates a new dataset, so you can compare runs over time.

To send results somewhere automatically, use the Integrations tab: Google Sheets, Slack, Make, Zapier, n8n and webhooks are built in. AI agents such as Claude or ChatGPT can run it as a tool through the Apify MCP server.

Related actors

Actor	What it does
TikTok Profile Scraper & Influencer Email Finder	TikTok creators by keyword with follower counts and contact emails.
Video Transcript Scraper	Transcripts from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X videos.
TikTok Scraper Pro	TikTok hashtags, profiles, keyword search, comments and followers.
Instagram Scraper	Instagram posts, profiles, hashtags and comments.
Recipe Extractor	Turns cooking videos and recipe pages into structured recipe JSON.

FAQ, disclaimers, and support

Do I need a YouTube API key? No. There is no API key, OAuth or quota.

Why is channelEmail empty when YouTube shows "View email address"? YouTube only reveals that address to signed-in users behind a CAPTCHA. hasBusinessEmail: true tells you it exists; the Actor reads emails written in the description or on the channel's website.

Are comment counts exact? YouTube shows them rounded ("5.7K"); commentsCount is that number and commentsCountText the original text.

Is scraping YouTube legal? This Actor reads only public data that YouTube shows to any visitor. Personal data such as emails is protected by laws like GDPR; only use it for a legitimate purpose. If in doubt, ask a lawyer.

Found a bug or need a field? Open an issue on the Issues tab. Need a custom YouTube scraper, comments or transcripts? Get in touch through the Issues tab too.

Does YouTube have an official API? Why use this instead? The YouTube Data API has a daily quota that runs out fast on search, and it never returns a channel's contact email. This Actor reads public YouTube pages, has no quota, and finds the business email a creator publishes.

What are the alternatives to this Actor? You can collect channels by hand, use an influencer database, or work with the Data API. Influencer databases charge monthly subscriptions. This Actor charges per result and you keep the raw data.

Privacy

To see which searches are useful, this Actor sends anonymous run inputs (such as keywords, hashtags and usernames) and a hashed account ID to the developer. Tokens, cookies and proxy settings are never sent. Nothing from your results is collected.