YouTube Shorts Scraper - Shorts, Views, Likes & Search

YouTube Shorts Scraper collects YouTube Shorts from channels, search terms and hashtags, with each Short's views, likes, comment count, publish date, duration, hashtags, tags and the channel's subscribers. Get a channel's latest or most popular Shorts, search Shorts by keyword, or follow a hashtag, and download JSON, CSV or Excel. No login, no API key, $0.61 per 1,000 Shorts.

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What does YouTube Shorts Scraper do?

• 📺 Shorts of any channel: the Shorts tab of each channel URL or @handle, in Latest, Popular or Oldest order, with no upper limit.
• 🔎 YouTube Shorts search: what YouTube shows for a keyword with the Shorts filter on, by relevance or popularity, with the upload-date filter.
• #️⃣ Shorts by hashtag: the Shorts posted under a hashtag such as #sourdough.
• 📅 Date range: only Shorts published after or before a date, or within an age like "7 days".
• 📊 Exact numbers: exact views, likes and comment count of each Short, plus its hashtags, tags, category, duration and description links.
• ✅ Each Short once per run and pay only for what is saved, with a maximum cost per run if you want one.

What data can you extract from YouTube Shorts?

Item	Data
Short	title, description, URL, publish date and time, duration, views, likes, comment count, comments turned off, hashtags, tags, category, thumbnail, links in the description, paid promotion
Channel of each Short	channel name, @handle, URL and ID, subscribers, verified badge
Where it was found	channel, search term or hashtag, and its rank in that list

How to scrape YouTube Shorts

1. Open YouTube Shorts Scraper on Apify and click Try for free.
2. Add channels (URLs or @handles), search terms, hashtags, or any mix.
3. Set Max Shorts per channel and Max Shorts per search term or hashtag.
4. Optionally choose the channel order, the search order and upload date, and a date range.
5. Click Start and download the Shorts as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML.

How to find the most viewed Shorts of a channel

Add the channel and choose Popular as the channel Shorts order: its most viewed Shorts come first.

How to find trending Shorts on a topic

Add search terms, choose Popularity and an upload date such as This week: you get the most viewed recent Shorts for each term.

How to collect the Shorts under a hashtag

Add the hashtag, with or without the #, under Hashtags. Each hashtag gets up to Max Shorts per search term or hashtag.

How much does it cost to scrape YouTube Shorts?

Pay per Short saved, with platform usage and proxies included and no monthly fee for the Actor:

Result	Price per 1,000	Silver plan	Gold plan
Shorts	$0.61	$0.549	$0.488

Each run also has Apify's standard Actor start charge: $0.0005 per run (one event per GB of memory, at least one; this Actor uses at most 1 GB, so one event per run).

Examples:

• 1,000 Shorts from a search term: $0.61.
• 50 channels with their latest 100 Shorts each (5,000 Shorts): $3.05.

Apify's free plan comes with $5 of platform credit every month, enough for about 8,000 Shorts. Set a maximum cost per run and the scraper stops cleanly before the first Short that would go over it.

Input example

{
  "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@NASA", "@NatGeo"],
  "maxShortsPerChannel": 100,
  "channelSortBy": "popular",
  "searchQueries": ["pasta recipe", "iphone tips"],
  "hashtags": ["sourdough"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 200,
  "uploadDate": "month",
  "sortBy": "popularity",
  "publishedAfter": "30 days"
}

Output example

A Short from NASA's channel:

{
  "dataType": "video",
  "id": "k5Z7sFwFF7Q",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5Z7sFwFF7Q",
  "title": "Become a NASA Astronaut!",
  "description": "Applications are now open to join NASA's astronaut corps...",
  "publishedAt": "2026-11-07T18:29:19.000Z",
  "durationSeconds": 64,
  "duration": "00:01:04",
  "viewCount": 26347,
  "likeCount": 1829,
  "commentCount": null,
  "commentsTurnedOff": true,
  "hashtags": [],
  "category": "Science & Technology",
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k5Z7sFwFF7Q/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "videoType": "short",
  "isShort": true,
  "descriptionLinks": ["https://go.nasa.gov/3XbPprW"],
  "channelName": "NASA",
  "channelHandle": "@NASA",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@NASA",
  "channelSubscriberCount": 15100000,
  "channelIsVerified": true,
  "sourceType": "channel",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@NASA",
  "position": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-08T11:24:50.042Z"
}

commentCount is null here because NASA turned comments off for this Short (commentsTurnedOff: true).

Use cases

• Short-form trend research: the most viewed Shorts for a topic this week or this month.
• Competitor and creator analysis: which Shorts of a channel perform best, and how often it posts.
• Influencer discovery: creators whose Shorts get the most views in a niche.
• Content ideas: titles, hashtags and lengths of the Shorts that work.
• Brand monitoring: Shorts mentioning a brand or posted under a campaign hashtag.

Use it via API, Python, JavaScript and integrations

Run it and get the results in one call with the Apify API:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/socialscrapers~youtube-shorts-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchQueries": ["pasta recipe"], "maxResultsPerQuery": 50}'

Python, with the Apify client:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("socialscrapers/youtube-shorts-scraper").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": ["@NASA"],
    "maxShortsPerChannel": 50,
    "channelSortBy": "popular",
})
for short in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(short["title"], short["viewCount"])

JavaScript, with the Apify client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('socialscrapers/youtube-shorts-scraper').call({ hashtags: ['sourdough'], maxResultsPerQuery: 100 });
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Schedule runs, get a webhook when one finishes, or send the Shorts to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets and other tools through Apify integrations. AI agents and assistants can run it through Apify's MCP server.

YouTube Data API vs YouTube Shorts Scraper

	Official YouTube Data API	YouTube Shorts Scraper
Setup	Google Cloud project and API key	None: give channels, search terms or hashtags
Limits	10,000 quota units a day by default; one search costs 100 units	No quota
Shorts	No filter that separates Shorts from other videos	Shorts only: a channel's Shorts tab, Shorts search, hashtag Shorts
Price	Free within the quota	$0.61 per 1,000 Shorts

Limits

• Public Shorts only. The scraper never signs in.
• YouTube lists a few hundred results per search term; for more, add more terms or split by upload date. Channels' Shorts tabs are read in full.
• Hashtags: YouTube shows only part of a hashtag's Shorts to visitors who are not signed in.
• Subscriber counts are as precise as YouTube shows them ("15.1M" becomes 15100000). Views, likes and comment counts are exact.
• Not included: the Short's audio track name and the video file.
• Datacenter proxy choices fall back to residential. If you pick Apify Proxy without the RESIDENTIAL group, the first session YouTube refuses moves the run to RESIDENTIAL, in the same country; custom proxy URLs are used exactly as given.
• Share links work as they are: youtube.com/shorts/… and youtu.be/… links, with or without the app's ?si=… share parameter.
• A run with 0 results still succeeds. When a video is private or deleted, a channel does not exist or a search finds nothing, the run ends as Succeeded with a status message naming each input and why, and nothing is charged. When nothing in the input can be used at all, the run also ends as Succeeded, with a status message that starts "Nothing to scrape:" and says what to fix; no results are charged. A run fails only when YouTube refuses every one of 3 or more inputs and a well-known public channel is refused too (the scraper is then blocked; try again later).

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape YouTube Shorts? YouTube Shorts Scraper collects only data that anyone can see without signing in. You are responsible for how you use the data, including YouTube's terms and the laws that apply to you, such as the GDPR for personal data.

Do I need a YouTube account or API key? No. Add channels, search terms or hashtags and start the run.

How many Shorts can I get from a channel? All of them: there is no upper limit, and the scraper reads the Shorts tab until YouTube has no more.

Can I get the comments of Shorts? Use YouTube Comments Scraper with the Shorts URLs, or YouTube Scraper, which does Shorts, videos, comments and subtitles in one Actor.

How do I get only new Shorts? Set Published on or after (for example 7 days) and schedule the run.

Does it download the Shorts videos? No. It collects data about Shorts, not the video files.

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