YouTube Shorts Scraper

What is YouTube Shorts Scraper?

YouTube Shorts Scraper collects YouTube Shorts from three places — a channel's Shorts tab, a #hashtag feed and Shorts search results — and returns one clean row per Short: video ID, URL, title, view count, channel and thumbnail. No YouTube Data API key, no quota, no login. Run it from the Apify Console, on a schedule, or through the API and MCP server.

What data does YouTube Shorts Scraper extract?

Field	Description
videoId, url	The Short's 11-character ID and its youtube.com/shorts/… link
title	Title as shown on the Short card
viewCount, viewCountText	Views as a number (650599) and as YouTube shows it (650K views)
channelName, channelId, channelHandle	The creator (hashtag/search rows get the channel when Include details is on)
thumbnail	Vertical thumbnail URL
source, sourceType	Which channel, hashtag or search produced the row (channel / hashtag / search)
description, lengthSeconds, keywords	Only with Include details — description, length and tags, plus exact view count and channel
scrapedAt	When the row was collected

How to use YouTube Shorts Scraper

1. Add one or more channels (@MrBeast, a channel URL or a UC… ID), hashtags (cooking, with or without #) and/or search queries (iphone tips).
2. Set Max Shorts per source (default 30, up to 500).
3. Optional: turn on Include details for description, length, tags, exact views and the channel.
4. Run it, then download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read it through the API.

Example input

{
    "channels": ["@MrBeast"],
    "hashtags": ["cooking"],
    "searchQueries": ["iphone tips"],
    "maxShortsPerSource": 20,
    "includeDetails": false
}

Example output

{
    "videoId": "Zfw17gIWDC8",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Zfw17gIWDC8",
    "title": "iPhone Tips You NEED To Know! 🔥",
    "viewCount": 96000,
    "viewCountText": "96K views",
    "channelName": null,
    "source": "iphone tips",
    "sourceType": "search",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-28T09:40:00.000Z"
}

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube Shorts?

Pay per result: $0.001 per Short ($1 per 1,000), with volume discounts on paid Apify plans, plus a negligible actor-start fee. Only Shorts that land in your dataset are charged; a channel, hashtag or search that fails is recorded in the run's ERRORS key-value record and costs nothing. Set Maximum cost per run to cap spend.

YouTube Shorts Scraper vs. the YouTube Data API

The official API has no Shorts-only feed or hashtag endpoint, and a single search.list call costs 100 of your 10,000 daily quota units. This Actor reads the same public pages the YouTube app loads — Shorts tab, hashtag feed and the Shorts search filter — with no key and no quota.

Using YouTube Shorts Scraper with AI agents

The Actor is pay-per-event with limited permissions, so AI agents can call it through Apify's MCP server (mcp.apify.com). It accepts the field names agents tend to guess: channel, channelUrl, url, hashtag, query.

FAQ

Is scraping YouTube Shorts legal? The Actor reads only public pages without logging in. You are responsible for how you use the data (YouTube's terms, privacy law, copyright of the videos).

Why is channelName empty on hashtag or search rows? Those feeds do not show the creator on the card. Turn on Include details to fill it from the video's own page data.

Why fewer Shorts than I asked for? A hashtag or search feed ends when YouTube stops returning new Shorts. Some channels have only a handful.

Limits: public Shorts only; no like/comment counts or exact publish dates (YouTube does not expose them to this data path); Include details fills most but not every Short when YouTube withholds a video's data; view counts on cards are rounded ("650K") unless Include details is on.

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Support and feedback

Found a channel layout this Actor doesn't handle, or a parsing bug? Open an issue on the Issues tab.