# YouTube Shorts Scraper (`happy_b/youtube-shorts-scraper`) Actor

Extract Shorts from YouTube channels with exact view counts, ISO timestamps, and 37 fields per Short.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/happy_b/youtube-shorts-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Happy B](https://apify.com/happy_b) (community)
- **Categories:** Social media, Videos
- **Features:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 46 total users, 28 monthly users, 98.0% runs succeeded, 3 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.25 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

### What is YouTube Shorts Scraper?

YouTube Shorts Scraper extracts complete Shorts data from any public YouTube channel with **exact numbers, ISO 8601 timestamps, and 37 fields per short** — ready for spreadsheets, dashboards, and analysis pipelines.

Every number is an exact integer. Every date is ISO 8601. No "1.2M" guesses, no "10 months ago" approximations.

#### Data points extracted per short

| Field | Description | Example |
|-------|-------------|---------|
| `videoId` | YouTube video ID | `dQw4w9WgXcQ` |
| `title` | Short title | `Wait for it... #shorts` |
| `publishedAt` | ISO 8601 upload timestamp | `2026-03-15T14:30:00Z` |
| `viewCount` | Exact view count | `12500000` |
| `likeCount` | Exact like count | `890000` |
| `commentCount` | Exact comment count | `15420` |
| `duration` | ISO 8601 duration | `PT45S` |
| `durationSeconds` | Duration in seconds | `45` |
| `tags` | Video tags | `shorts,funny,viral` |
| `categoryId` | YouTube category ID | `24` |
| `categoryName` | Human-readable category | `Entertainment` |
| `definition` | Video quality | `hd` |
| `type` | Video type | `shorts` |
| `channelName` | Channel display name | `MrBeast` |
| `channelSubscriberCount` | Exact subscriber count | `464000000` |
| `channelIsVerified` | Verification badge | `true` |

**37 fields per short. Every number exact. Every date ISO 8601.**

### Why use this scraper?

#### Our Actor vs Top YouTube Shorts Actors

| Field | Us | Streamers |
|-------|:--:|:---------:|
| `publishedAt` ISO 8601 exact | ✅ | ❌ relative |
| `likeCount` exact integer | ✅ | ❌ |
| `commentCount` exact integer | ✅ | ❌ |
| `subscriberCount` exact integer | ✅ | ❌ abbreviated |
| `tags` | ✅ | ❌ |
| `categoryId` | ✅ | ❌ |
| `topicDetails` | ✅ | ❌ |
| `definition` (HD/SD) | ✅ | ❌ |
| `hasCaptions` | ✅ | ❌ |
| `isAgeRestricted` | ✅ | ❌ |
| `durationSeconds` integer | ✅ | ❌ |
| Bulk channels | ✅ | ✅ |
| Date filter | ✅ | ✅ |
| Price per 1,000 | **$0.50** | **$4.00** |

- **One row, full picture** — 37 fields per short, flat CSV. No second API call, no post-processing to parse "1.2K" into a number. Download, open in Excel, done.
- **Incremental delivery** — Results appear in your dataset within seconds. Export anytime, don't wait for the run to finish.
- **From $0.50 per 1,000 items** — Volume discounts down to $0.25 on Business plan. **8x cheaper than Streamers ($4.00/1K).**

### Use cases

- **Shorts trend analysis** — Track which Shorts go viral, when they're posted, and what tags and categories drive views. Identify patterns across channels and niches.
- **Content strategy** — Analyze top-performing Shorts by views, likes, and engagement ratios. Find the optimal length, best posting times, and winning hashtags for your vertical.
- **Influencer discovery** — Find creators producing high-engagement Shorts in your niche. Filter by subscriber count, posting frequency, verified status, and content category.
- **Competitive intelligence** — Monitor competitor Shorts: what they post, how often, what tags they use, which Shorts get the most engagement. Run weekly on a schedule.
- **Market research** — Benchmark channels by Shorts output, engagement rates, and content mix. Build datasets for reports and presentations with exact numbers.
- **ML training data** — Structured JSON with 37 fields per short, ready for recommendation systems, trend analysis, or content classification.

### How much does it cost?

Each short counts as one item.

| Plan | Price per 1,000 items |
|------|----------------------|
| Free | $0.50 |
| Starter | $0.45 |
| Scale | $0.40 |
| Business | $0.25 |

| Scenario | Items | Cost |
|----------|-------|------|
| 1 channel, 100 shorts | 100 | $0.05 |
| 10 channels, 100 shorts each | 1,000 | $0.50 |
| 50 channels, 200 shorts each | 10,000 | $5.00 |
| 1 channel, full history (2,000 shorts) | 2,000 | $1.00 |

Apify also charges a small compute cost (CU) for the actor's runtime — typically under $0.01 for most runs.

### Input

| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|-----------|------|---------|-------------|
| `channelUrls` | string\[] | *required* | YouTube channel URLs, handles (@MrBeast), or channel IDs (UC...). Supports /channel/, /@, /c/, /user/ formats. |
| `maxShorts` | integer | 100 | Maximum Shorts to fetch per channel. |
| `sortBy` | string | `latest` | `latest`, `popular`, or `oldest`. |
| `oldestVideoDate` | string | — | Only include Shorts published after this date (ISO 8601, e.g. `2025-01-01`). |
| `includeChannelInfo` | boolean | `true` | Attach channel metadata (subscribers, description, country) to each Short row. Disable to reduce output size. |

### Output example

Each item in the dataset is a single short:

```json
{
  "videoId": "abc123XYZ_0",
  "title": "Wait for it... #shorts",
  "description": "You won't believe what happens next...",
  "descriptionLinks": "",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/abc123XYZ_0/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-15T14:30:00Z",
  "duration": "PT45S",
  "durationSeconds": 45,
  "viewCount": 12500000,
  "likeCount": 890000,
  "commentCount": 15420,
  "tags": "shorts,funny,viral",
  "categoryId": 24,
  "categoryName": "Entertainment",
  "topicDetails": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment",
  "definition": "hd",
  "hasCaptions": false,
  "isAgeRestricted": false,
  "privacyStatus": "public",
  "commentsTurnedOff": false,
  "hashtags": "#shorts #funny",
  "type": "shorts",
  "order": 0,
  "channelId": "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
  "channelName": "MrBeast",
  "channelUsername": "@MrBeast",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
  "channelDescription": "SUBSCRIBE FOR A COOKIE!...",
  "channelCountry": "US",
  "channelJoinedAt": "2012-02-20T00:43:50Z",
  "channelSubscriberCount": 464000000,
  "channelTotalViews": 109144471886,
  "channelTotalVideos": 942,
  "channelAvatarUrl": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/...",
  "channelBannerUrl": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/...",
  "channelIsVerified": true,
  "scrapeTimestamp": "2026-04-02T12:00:00Z"
}
```

Download your results as **JSON**, **CSV**, **Excel**, **XML**, or **HTML** from the dataset tab, or access them via the [Apify API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2#/reference/datasets).

### Good to know

**Subscriber counts are exact integers.** Other scrapers return abbreviated text like "1.2M" that you have to parse. We return `1200000` — ready for calculations, sorting, and filtering.

**Channel info is repeated on every row.** This makes every CSV row self-contained. If you're scraping 50 channels and need to group by subscriber count, it's already there. Disable `includeChannelInfo` to reduce output size if you don't need it.

**Shorts only.** This actor fetches only Shorts (videos under 60 seconds). For regular videos, use [YouTube Channel Scraper](https://apify.com/happy_b/youtube-channel-scraper). For both videos and Shorts together, use the channel scraper with `maxShorts` set above 0.

### Integrations

Connect this actor to your workflow with [Apify integrations](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations):

- **Make (Integromat)** — trigger workflows when new data is available
- **Zapier** — push shorts to Google Sheets, Slack, or databases
- **GitHub** — store results in repositories
- **Google Drive** — export directly to spreadsheets
- **Webhooks** — notify your API when the run completes
- **Apify API** — programmatic access for custom pipelines

### Legal and personal data

This actor extracts publicly available data from YouTube. You should ensure your use of the extracted data complies with YouTube's [Terms of Service](https://www.youtube.com/t/terms), applicable data protection laws (GDPR, CCPA), and your jurisdiction's regulations regarding web scraping and data processing.

Channel and video information is public content visible to anyone on YouTube.

### Support

Found a bug or have a feature request? Open an issue on the [Issues tab](https://apify.com/happy_b/youtube-shorts-scraper/issues/open) or contact us through Apify messaging.

# Actor input Schema

## `channelUrls` (type: `array`):

YouTube channel URLs, handles (@MrBeast), or channel IDs. Supports youtube.com/channel/, youtube.com/@, youtube.com/c/ formats.

## `maxShorts` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of Shorts to fetch per channel.

## `sortBy` (type: `string`):

How to sort Shorts from each channel.

## `oldestVideoDate` (type: `string`):

Only include Shorts published after this date. ISO 8601 format (e.g. 2025-01-01).

## `includeChannelInfo` (type: `boolean`):

Attach full channel metadata (subscribers, description, country, etc.) to each Short row. Disable to reduce output size.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "channelUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"
  ],
  "maxShorts": 100,
  "sortBy": "latest",
  "includeChannelInfo": true
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `videos` (type: `string`):

No description

## `metadata` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "channelUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("happy_b/youtube-shorts-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("happy_b/youtube-shorts-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "channelUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"
  ]
}' |
apify call happy_b/youtube-shorts-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,happy_b/youtube-shorts-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/oanJXecaodRgM9Lng/builds/E6COCHypStTKdrd5Y/openapi.json