Need help finding viral Shorts channels in my niche to analyze

Discussion & Solutions
1

Is there a free tool or a specific way to search YouTube to find these trending creators quickly? Looking for a list of channel URLs to feed into my research. Any tips?

2

Yes — there are a few good free methods that work surprisingly well for finding viral Shorts channels in a niche.

Here’s a simple workflow:

  1. Search on YouTube using:

    • “#shorts + your niche”

    • “viral shorts + niche”

    • “most viewed shorts + niche”

  2. Filter by:

    • This month

    • View count

  3. Open the videos getting:

    • unusually high views

    • high comment activity

    • repetitive viral formats

  4. Then check:

    • their “Popular” tab

    • upload frequency

    • hooks/titles

    • average short length

Free tools that help:

  • VidIQ

  • TubeBuddy

  • Playboard

  • SocialBlade

  • Viewstats

A very underrated trick:

Search:
"site:youtube.com/shorts your niche"
on Google.

You’ll often discover smaller viral creators faster than using YouTube search directly.

Also don’t only study huge channels.
Sometimes channels with:

  • 5k–50k subscribers

  • but millions of Shorts views

are the best creators to reverse-engineer because their formats are still fresh and easier to replicate.

3

The loot you actually want: a stack of channel URLs in your niche that are viral right now, free, with no hour-long YouTube scroll. That’s the ask — that’s what gets answered.

:fire: The thing nobody’s written about yet: YouTube’s own search filters quietly got the upgrade you needed in early 2026. Two filters got renamed, a Shorts-only type filter appeared, and most posts on this topic are still describing the old UI — including the ones recommending $39/mo tools to do exactly what those filters now do for free.

Tiny bridge: You know how you’d usually “sort by view count”? They renamed it to Popularity — which now factors in watch time and engagement, not just raw views. Combine that with the new Shorts-only filter and a date range, and you’re done in 90 seconds.

:bullseye: The 90-second free workflow

Step Action
:one: Open YouTube, search your niche keyword
:two: Click Filters (top-right of results)
:three: Type → Shorts
:four: Upload Date → This week
:five: Prioritize → Popularity
:six: Scroll, paste channel URLs into a sheet. :white_check_mark:

:light_bulb: I run this every Monday morning on three keyword variants for the niche I’m tracking — about 6 minutes, lands me 15–20 fresh channel URLs each time. Replaced the discovery half of what I used to pay vidIQ Boost for.

:warning: If Popularity doesn’t show in your filter dropdown: you’re on an older client. Refresh the page or try desktop — the rollout’s been uneven through Q1 2026.

If that’s enough for what you’re doing, you’re done. If you want the rest of the stack, four boxes below — pick your friction level.

🥇 Free Path #2 — when the YouTube filter pool feels too small

FindAChannel.net — someone already pre-indexed 220K channels into 10,610 niches. No signup, no extension, no install. Pick your niche from their library → get a complete channel breakdown with subscriber counts, monthly upload rates, and estimated monthly earnings already compiled. If your niche is in there, you can skip the YouTube-filter step entirely.

vidIQ free tier — Outliers tool — install the extension, free plan gives 6 results per search. Since their Summer 2025 update, Outliers now supports Shorts specifically with subscriber-range filters (so you can hide the MrBeast-tier channels and only see breakout small accounts).

:light_bulb: Trick: 6 isn’t a lot per search — run it on 4–5 niche sub-keywords. That’s 20+ fresh channels per session, still zero dollars.

🐍 Programmatic — if you can paste three lines of Python

scrapetube — 490 GitHub stars, MIT licensed, last release Sep 2025. No API key, no rate limits, no Selenium nonsense.

The whole thing:

import scrapetube
videos = scrapetube.get_search("your niche keyword")
for video in videos:
    print(video['videoId'], video.get('channelName'))

Pipe through a set() to dedupe channels, dump to CSV. Cron it weekly.

:warning: If it stops returning results: YouTube probably tweaked their Innertube (the private API their own frontend uses). pip install --upgrade scrapetube — the maintainer usually has it patched within a week.

💸 Cheap tier — what's actually worth paying for in 2026
Tool Price What you get
OutlierKit $9–19/mo · 7-day free trial, no card Niche Explorer + dedicated Shorts Outliers — fastest path if you run this weekly across multiple niches
vidIQ Pro $7.50/mo (annual) Same Outliers tool, uncapped from the free tier’s 6 results

Skip in 2026:

  • Spotter Studio / 1of10 at $29/mo
  • Viewstats Pro at $49/mo

The $9–19 layer eats both lunches now — unless you specifically want MrBeast-branded data or premium AI thumbnail tools.

🎬 Bonus play — if you also touch TikTok

Virlo tracks TikTok and YouTube Shorts in one dashboard. The thing nobody mentions: trends transit TikTok → Shorts with a 2–4 week lag. Watching TikTok in Virlo’s free tier gives you that head start on what’s about to land in your YouTube niche.

:light_bulb: You become the person posting the trend, not the person noticing it after everyone else already did.

:clipboard: Quick Hits

Want… Do this
:bullseye: Channel URLs right now The filter combo at the top — 90 seconds
:books: Pre-compiled niche lists FindAChannel.net
:snake: Weekly auto-run scrapetube + cron
:money_with_wings: Time > money OutlierKit free trial
:clapper_board: Trend head-start Virlo free tier

The thing nobody admits on these threads: a chunk of the guides recommending $39/mo tools are affiliate-linked. YouTube doesn’t pay anyone to send traffic to its own search bar — so the native filter combo gets buried first.

Three filters and a sheet. That’s all the wall ever was.