YouTube Shorts Scraper — Data, Transcripts & Comments

Video walkthrough

A 50-second recording of a real run (one channel, 8 Shorts, 20 comments each): https://youtu.be/0CwQeIuzTg0

Paste Shorts links or a whole channel and get one row per Short with three things most tools sell separately: the video data, the spoken transcript, and the comments.

What you get

One row per Short, 20 flat columns (nothing nested — exports cleanly to Excel/CSV):

Group	Fields
Video data	video_id, url, titulo, canal, canal_url, duracion_s, fecha_publicacion, vistas, me_gusta, miniatura_url
Spoken transcript	idioma, subtitulo_automatico, es_traduccion, fragmentos_total, texto_con_tiempos, texto_completo
Comments	comentarios_incluidos, comentarios_texto
Status	estado, error

Turn on incluirSubtitulos and every row also carries subtitulos_srt: the same transcript as ready-to-use SRT subtitles (Premiere, CapCut, YouTube). Off by default, because the SRT repeats the whole text and that text is paid in proxy transfer.

The transcript comes in the video's original language, not one of YouTube's ~20 automatic machine translations — and every line carries a timestamp ([00:01.64] ...).

Comments arrive as one line each, with the author and its like count: @ana (212 me gusta): el mejor video.

Why this one

The biggest Shorts scraper in the Store returns the video data and tells you whether a Short has captions and how many comments it has — but not the text and not the comments. Here you get all of it in a single run, from one input.

Input

Field	Meaning
startUrls	Shorts links, video links, or channel URLs (a channel returns every Short on its Shorts tab)
maxShortsPorEnlace	Cap per link (default 10)
comentariosPorShort	Top comments per Short (default 20; 0 = no comments)
incluirTexto	Include the transcript (default on)
usarUnblockerParaTexto	Optional fallback if YouTube rate-limits
enParalelo	How many Shorts to process at once (1–8, default 4). Higher is faster and cheaper per Short
proxyConfiguration	Residential proxy by default — YouTube limits per IP

Integrations (copy-paste)

Python (pip install apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("sicteg/youtube-shorts-scraper").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast/shorts"],
    "maxShortsPorEnlace": 50,
    "comentariosPorShort": 20,
})
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(row["titulo"], row["vistas"], len(row["texto_completo"]))

n8n: add an Apify node → Run Actor and get dataset → Actor sicteg/youtube-shorts-scraper, paste the same JSON as input. One item per Short comes back, ready for a summarizer or a repurposing workflow.

Google Sheets / Excel: run it, download the dataset as CSV/XLSX, or use the Apify Google Sheets integration. No nested arrays, so nothing breaks on import.

Ready-to-run example script (no dependencies, exports straight to CSV): it lives in this repository — https://github.com/sictegltda-cyber/youtube-shorts-transcripts-to-csv — with the three traps this Actor handles documented in its README.

Write-up with the measurements: https://sictegltda.com/youtube-shorts-transcripts.html

Price

Pay per result, only for what you actually receive:

• $5.00 per 1,000 Shorts (data + transcript) → $0.005 each.
• $0.20 per 1,000 comments (add-on) → $0.0002 each.
• Shorts without captions are reported as sin_subtitulo and not charged.

A full row with the transcript and 20 comments costs $0.009.

How it behaves

• Residential proxy rotating on every request, with retries on rate limits: Shorts without captions are reported instead of failing the run.
• Tested on real channels: 3 channels in English and Spanish, transcripts, dates, likes and comments all matching what YouTube shows.
• Use it from n8n, Make, Zapier or your own code through the Apify API.

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🇪🇸 En español

Subtítulos SRT (opcional): con incluirSubtitulos activado, cada fila trae además subtitulos_srt con los subtítulos listos para Premiere, CapCut o YouTube.

Pega enlaces de Shorts o un canal completo y obtén una fila por Short con los datos del video, el texto hablado con tiempos (en el idioma original, no una traducción automática) y los comentarios.

Se cobra solo por lo que se entrega: US$5 por cada 1.000 Shorts (datos + texto) y US$0,20 por cada 1.000 comentarios. Los Shorts sin subtítulo se reportan y no se cobran.

20 columnas planas: sale limpio en Excel, sin arreglos anidados.