Forem: Khadin Akbar

How to Scrape YouTube Shorts in 2026 — Titles, Hashtags & Viral Score

Khadin Akbar — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 08:45:39 +0000

Manually hunting for viral YouTube Shorts is a full-time job. You scroll, you screenshot, you paste into a spreadsheet — and by the time you're done, the trend has moved on.

This post shows you how to automate it with a free Apify actor that pulls titles, hashtags, view counts, engagement rates, and a computed viral score for any keyword in seconds.

What the Actor Scrapes

The YouTube Shorts Scraper extracts:

Titles from YouTube's internal reelItemRenderer (no proxy needed)
View count and engagement rate — (likes + comments) / views x 100
Viral Score — composite score weighting views, recency, and engagement
Hashtags — parsed directly from titles
Audio/music metadata — song name, artist, is_original_audio flag
Thumbnail URLs — full-resolution for every Short
Channel info — name and URL

Quick Start

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

const run = await client.actor('khadinakbar/youtube-shorts-scraper').call({
  searchQuery: 'morning routine tips',
  maxResults: 25,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Or run it on Apify Store — no code needed.

Example Output

{
  "video_id": "abc123XYZ",
  "title": "My 5AM Morning Routine Changed Everything",
  "channel_name": "MindsetDaily",
  "view_count": 2400000,
  "engagement_rate": 4.25,
  "viral_score": 91.3,
  "hashtags": ["#morningroutine", "#shorts"],
  "audio_track": "Lo-fi Morning",
  "is_original_audio": false
}

How It Works

YouTube blocks individual Shorts pages from cloud IPs without residential proxies. The actor solves this with a two-phase architecture:

Phase 1: Intercepts YouTube's internal search API response, which reliably returns title, thumbnail, and view count for every Short — even from cloud IPs.

Phase 2: Visits each Short's page to extract likes, comments, and audio. If the page is blocked, it gracefully falls back to Phase 1 data — you always get results.

MCP Integration

Available as an MCP tool for Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible AI assistant:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,get-actor-run,get-actor-run-list,khadinakbar/youtube-shorts-scraper

Get Started

Run on Apify Store — free tier, no credit card required.

More scrapers: YouTube Email | Google Trends | Instagram Hashtags

How to Extract Emails from YouTube Channels (Free Apify Actor)

Khadin Akbar — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:11:06 +0000

How to Extract Emails from YouTube Channels (Free Apify Actor)

Finding contact emails for YouTube creators manually is soul-crushing work. You visit the About page, scroll, look for a business email, copy it, paste it into a spreadsheet — then repeat 499 more times.

There's a better way.

What This Actor Does

The YouTube Channel Email & Contact Scraper automatically extracts:

Emails — directly from About pages, linked websites, and Linktree/Beacons pages
Phone numbers — from public channel descriptions
Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram, WhatsApp — decoded from YouTube's redirect links
Website — the creator's linked external site
Subscriber count, video count, total views, country

It handles obfuscated emails like business [at] mkbhd [dot] com, follows Linktree pages automatically, and only charges you when an email is actually found.

Quick Start

Run it with just a list of channel URLs:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

const run = await client.actor('khadinakbar/youtube-channel-email-extractor').call({
  channelUrls: [
    'https://www.youtube.com/@mkbhd',
    'https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium',
    'https://www.youtube.com/@lexfridman',
  ],
  scrapeWebsite: true,
  followLinkAggregators: true,
  maxResults: 100,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Or discover channels by niche automatically:

const run = await client.actor('khadinakbar/youtube-channel-email-extractor').call({
  searchQueries: ['fitness youtube channels', 'tech reviewers 2026'],
  maxResults: 50,
});

Example Output

{
  "channel_name": "Marques Brownlee",
  "channel_handle": "@mkbhd",
  "subscriber_count": "20.9M subscribers",
  "email": "business@mkbhd.com",
  "all_emails": ["business@mkbhd.com"],
  "phone": null,
  "website": "http://shop.MKBHD.com/",
  "social_instagram": "http://instagram.com/MKBHD",
  "social_twitter": "http://twitter.com/MKBHD",
  "social_facebook": "http://facebook.com/MKBHD",
  "social_tiktok": null,
  "email_sources": ["youtube_about"],
  "scraped_at": "2026-04-02T06:21:43.543Z"
}

3-Source Email Pipeline

Most YouTube email scrapers only check the About page description. This actor goes further:

YouTube About page — extracts mailto links and scans description text (including obfuscated formats)
Linked website — visits the creator's website and scrapes it for additional contact emails
Link aggregators — follows Linktree, Beacons.ai, Bio.link, etc. which often have booking emails and full social profiles

This multi-source approach increases email hit rates by 30–50% vs. About-page-only scrapers.

Pricing

Pay per email found — not per channel scraped.

Channels without a public email are processed (you still get social links, subscriber count, website, etc.) but you're not charged. Billing only triggers when an actual email is extracted.

Emails found	Cost
10	$0.50
100	$5.00
1,000	$50.00

Apify gives you $5 free credit on signup — that covers your first 100 email results.

Use With AI Agents (MCP)

The actor is MCP-ready. Connect it to Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP-compatible agent:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,get-actor-run,get-actor-run-list,khadinakbar/youtube-channel-email-extractor

Once connected, just ask your agent naturally:

"Find business emails for 50 fitness YouTubers"
"Get contact info for these channels: @mkbhd, @veritasium"
"Build a list of tech creator emails with 100k+ subscribers"

The agent understands the intent and calls the right input fields automatically.

Why Not Just Use Hunter.io or Apollo?

Those tools find emails from LinkedIn and company databases — they miss the 90% of creators who never list their email anywhere except their YouTube About page.

This actor goes to the source. YouTube About pages are where creators actually put their business contact info for brand deals and partnerships.

Try it free: apify.com/khadinakbar/youtube-channel-email-extractor

Questions or feedback? Drop them in the comments.

How to Scrape Telegram Channels in 2026 — Free MCP + Apify Actor (No Login Required)

Khadin Akbar — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:40:53 +0000

Telegram has become one of the most valuable intelligence sources on the internet. Crypto alpha, B2B leads, community signals, competitor monitoring — it's all flowing through public channels right now.

The problem? There's no official Telegram API for scraping public channels without a registered account. Every guide you find either requires a phone number, developer app credentials, or hits rate limits within minutes.

This guide shows you how to scrape any public Telegram channel in 2026 — no account, no API key, no rate limits — using a free Apify actor and an MCP server that works directly inside Claude and Cursor.

What You'll Be Able to Do

By the end of this guide you'll be able to:

Scrape messages from any public Telegram channel
Extract emails, phone numbers, and links for lead generation
Get subscriber counts and channel metadata
Discover related channels via forwarded message analysis
Do all of this from inside Claude Desktop or Cursor with zero code

Option 1: Use the Hosted MCP (Zero Setup — Recommended)

The fastest path is the Apify-hosted MCP. No installation, no npm, no config files.

Just add this URL to your MCP client:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,get-actor-run,get-actor-run-list,khadinakbar/telegram-channel-scraper

Claude Desktop (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "telegram-scraper": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,get-actor-run,get-actor-run-list,khadinakbar/telegram-channel-scraper",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Get your free Apify token at console.apify.com/account/integrations. No credit card required — Apify gives you $5/month free.

Once connected, ask Claude:

"Scrape the last 50 messages from @durov and extract any email addresses"

Option 2: npm MCP Server (Local Install)

npm install -g telegram-channel-scraper-mcp-server

Add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "telegram-scraper": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "telegram-channel-scraper-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "APIFY_TOKEN": "your_apify_token_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Option 3: Run the Actor Directly via API

const Apify = require('apify-client');

const client = new Apify.ApifyClient({
  token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN,
});

const run = await client.actor('khadinakbar/telegram-channel-scraper').call({
  channelUrls: ['https://t.me/durov'],
  maxMessages: 100,
  includeEmailsAndLinks: true,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Available MCP Tools

When using this via Claude or Cursor, you get four tools:

telegram_scrape_messages — Scrape messages from one or more channels. Supports incremental mode (since_last_run) for monitoring workflows.

telegram_get_channel_info — Get subscriber count, verification status, description, and linked username.

telegram_discover_related_channels — Find related channels by analyzing forwarded messages from seed channels. Great for competitive research.

telegram_extract_leads — Focused lead extraction that scans up to 10 channels for emails and links.

Real-World Use Cases

B2B Lead Generation — Scan niche business channels in your industry. Export emails to your CRM.

Competitor Monitoring — Track what competitors are posting in their Telegram communities. Get a weekly digest inside Claude.

Crypto/Finance Research — Monitor alpha channels and extract links to mentioned projects before they go viral.

Community Intelligence — Find where your target audience is active. Use telegram_discover_related_channels to map the landscape.

OSINT — Public Telegram channels are one of the most open intelligence sources available. This tool makes them queryable.

Pricing

Event	Cost
Actor start	$0.003
Per message scraped	$0.002
Per channel info	$0.001

Scraping 100 messages = ~$0.20. Apify's free tier gives you $5/month — roughly 2,000 messages per month for free.

Links

Built by Khadin Akbar. If this saved you time, leave a star on GitHub.