ReelShort Scraper — Catalog, Themes, Cast, IMDb & View Counts

Scrape the ReelShort vertical short-drama catalog without the app: title metadata, theme & trope tags, episode counts, cast with IMDb links, view counts and collect counts — structured, ready for analysis. API-first (reads the site's own SSR JSON, no browser), so runs are fast, cheap, and reliable. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML, or pull straight through the Apify API into your app, agent, notebook, or spreadsheet.

This is the missing ReelShort API / ReelShort data source: the $11.3B short-drama category has had essentially zero structured-data coverage. If you're a studio, licensor, casting researcher, or analyst asking "what's charting and what should we greenlight next?" — this is your dataset.

No per-datapoint games, never charged for failures. Flat $2 per 1,000 titles ($0.002 each), billed only per title actually stored. Invalid or failed pages are never charged.

What it scrapes

Field	Description
bookId / title	Title ID (and transport ID) and name
synopsis	Full description
themes / tags	Card theme tropes plus the full tag list (Sweet Romance, Hidden Identity, Feel-Good, …)
readCount / collectCount / score	Platform-reported views, collects, and popularity score
chapterCount	Number of episodes
cast[] + imdbId / imdbUrl	Cast with photos and IMDb actor links, plus the title's IMDb id — a cast index that exists nowhere else publicly
durationSec	First-episode duration (detail mode)
releaseDate	Release date
cover / url	Cover image and canonical title URL

Modes

• Full catalog (crawl) — seeds from the ReelShort homepage and expands through every featured category. Set Max results to cap size and cost.
• By category — scrapes one category's full list. Two kinds of category are supported, resolved live against the site: featured homepage shelves (e.g. Hidden Identity, Tear-jerkers, Young Love — one request each) and genre/identity/trope tags from ReelShort's Genre browse (e.g. Crime Lord, Single Dad, Comedy, Revenge — paginated, often hundreds of titles). The dropdown lists every shelf plus all identity, trope, genre, theme and mood tags; via JSON/API input you can also pass an actor's name to scrape their filmography, resolved live.
• Specific title URLs — scrape exactly the ReelShort episode URLs you provide.

Turn Include cast, IMDb & full tags off for a faster, cheaper run that uses only the listing data (title, themes, episode count, view & collect counts).

Input example

{
    "mode": "category",
    "category": "Hidden Identity",
    "maxItems": 200,
    "includeDetails": true
}

Output example

{
    "source": "reelshort",
    "bookId": "68955a832bc50c718b009d8d",
    "title": "Daisy Tucker and Mr. NYC",
    "url": "https://www.reelshort.com/episodes/episode-1-daisy-tucker-and-mr-nyc-68955a832bc50c718b009d8d-fxcfjh1dzy",
    "themes": ["Sweet Romance"],
    "tags": ["Feel-Good", "Reunited Lovers", "Sweet Romance"],
    "chapterCount": 77,
    "readCount": 52286934,
    "collectCount": 256270,
    "score": 9183,
    "durationSec": 168,
    "imdbId": "tt37855561",
    "imdbUrl": "https://www.imdb.com/title/tt37855561/",
    "cast": [{ "actorName": "Richard Sharrah", "imdbUrl": "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5340956/" }],
    "releaseDate": "2025-08-11T07:00:00.000Z",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-14T03:25:00.000Z"
}

Export the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Apify Console, or fetch it via the Apify API / SDK.

Who uses this

• Vertical-drama studios & producers — track which themes, tropes, and titles are charting to inform what to greenlight.
• Licensors & distributors — catalog intelligence across the fast-growing short-drama market.
• Casting & talent researchers — the cast list with IMDb links is a performer index for verticals that no public database covers.
• Market & trend analysts — engagement signals (views, collects, score) per title, theme, and release date.

How it works

ReelShort is a Next.js site that ships full structured data in the page's __NEXT_DATA__ payload (homepage feed, category lists, and per-title detail). The Actor reads that JSON directly with a browser-grade HTTP fingerprint (via Crawlee) — no headless browser to render or break, which is why runs are fast and cheap. It scrapes only public catalog metadata — no video assets, no user data.

Use it from n8n, Zapier, Make, MCP, and LangChain

Every Apify Actor is exposed via API and through Apify's integrations:

• n8n / Zapier / Make — run on a schedule and pipe title data into sheets, dashboards, or alerts.
• MCP / LangChain — give an AI agent live short-drama catalog data as a tool.
• Apify API & SDK — call it from your backend, then export CSV/JSON.

FAQ

Is there a ReelShort API? Not a public one. This Actor is the practical, available-today way to get structured ReelShort data.

How much does it cost? $0.002 per stored title — $2 per 1,000. You're never charged for failed or invalid pages. The free Apify plan's $5 monthly credit covers ~2,500 titles.

Are the view/collect counts exact? They're the platform's own reported numbers. Treat them as platform-reported figures.

Why do view count and score appear in detail mode too? The detail page omits them, so the Actor merges them in from the listing — you get cast/IMDb/tags and engagement counts in one record.

Is scraping this legal? The Actor extracts publicly available catalog metadata. As always, consult your own counsel for your specific use case.