Douyin Creator Profiles Scraper

Export douyin creator profiles from supplied public profile URLs for recurring creator benchmarking. Get identity, biography, exact public followers, following, total likes, works count, avatar URL and public IP region in timestamped snapshots.

This Actor collects profiles only. It does not collect recent posts, videos, comments, follower lists, search results, historical snapshots or private account data.

Who is it for?

• Creator analysts maintaining a supplied shortlist of Douyin accounts.
• Campaign teams comparing public creator counters before and after a campaign.
• Researchers building their own longitudinal dataset through scheduled snapshots.

You supply the creators. The Actor does not discover or rank creators, calculate growth automatically, or infer audience demographics.

Why use this Actor?

Each row represents one creator at one retrieval time, with stable IDs for joining your own snapshots. Exact numeric counters come from the browser's public profile response rather than rounded display text. Missing optional values stay null, not invented zeros.

Browser sessions are anonymous. You do not need to supply a Douyin password, cookies or API key. Access can still be blocked by Douyin; no universal availability is promised.

Getting started

1. Open a public creator profile on Douyin and copy its full /user/ URL.
2. Paste it into Public creator profile URLs. Short share links are not supported.
3. Set Maximum creator profiles to the desired global cap.
4. Run the Actor and inspect the Creator snapshots dataset view.
5. Export JSON, CSV or Excel using Apify's dataset export controls.

The prefilled example supplies one public creator profile. Its metrics change over time.

Input parameters

Field	Meaning
startUrls	Required list of 1–100 public HTTPS Douyin /user/<sec_uid> URLs; each entry is an object with a url property.
maxItems	Global distinct-profile cap, default 10, range 1–100. Zero is invalid.

URLs are trimmed, canonicalized to www.douyin.com, and stripped of trailing slashes, query strings and fragments. Duplicate canonical URLs count once, in first-seen order. All URLs are validated before applying the cap. Only url is used from each request-list entry; editor-generated method, payload, headers and userData fields are ignored, not forwarded. Do not supply credentials. There are no filters, discovery modes or post-pagination options.

{
  "startUrls": [
    {"url": "https://www.douyin.com/user/MS4wLjABAAAAk1tZ-L085zZf2yW_H5dnVFZWyk8Rt8v4RAvf9KhTyPoVdMDxTs7Q_rvgTJGWXezS"}
  ],
  "maxItems": 1
}

Extracted data

Field	Meaning
profileUrl	Canonical source profile URL.
secUid	Stable public security UID; checked against your requested profile.
uid	Public numeric user ID stored as text to preserve precision.
handle	Public Douyin ID, when exposed.
nickname	Current creator display name.
bio	Public biography, or null.
followers, following	Public exact counters; following can be null when absent.
totalLikes	Total likes received by the creator, not individual-post engagement.
postCount	Public works counter; no posts are downloaded.
avatarUrl	Public avatar URL, which may expire; no image bytes downloaded.
ipRegion	Douyin's public region label, not a raw IP or precise location.
scrapedAt	UTC retrieval timestamp.

Output example

The structure below is anonymized from an observed current profile response. Optional unavailable fields are null. Counts are illustrative, not guaranteed current values.

{
  "profileUrl": "https://www.douyin.com/user/MS4wLjABAAAAexample123456",
  "secUid": "MS4wLjABAAAAexample123456",
  "uid": "1234567890123456",
  "handle": "examplecreator",
  "nickname": "Example Creator",
  "bio": "Language learning and everyday life.",
  "followers": 48322,
  "following": 21,
  "totalLikes": 92060,
  "postCount": 212,
  "avatarUrl": "https://p3-pc.douyinpic.com/example.jpeg",
  "ipRegion": "内蒙古",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-16T06:06:42.861Z"
}

How much does it cost to extract Douyin creator profiles?

Pay per event: a $0.002 start fee per run plus $0.0075306 per saved creator profile on the Bronze plan. Other plans have tier-specific per-profile prices displayed in the Pricing tab.

Bronze example totals including the start fee: 1 result → $0.0095306; 10 results → $0.077306; 100 results → $0.75506 for a single run. No separate charge exists for individual fields. Failed or missing profiles do not generate a profile event; an already charged start fee and earlier saved rows can remain billed on a failed run. Platform spending limits can stop collection before your requested cap.

Limits and failure behavior

The Actor processes profiles sequentially using anonymous browser sessions and no paid proxy fallback. It makes at most two attempts per profile: an 8-second initial response window, then a fresh anonymous session with up to 40 seconds for recovery. It retires a failed session before retrying; a recovered profile is saved and charged only once. Healthy anonymous cookies are reused for at most ten successful profiles within a run, then discarded together with the browser process before starting the next cohort. Allow tens of seconds per profile; upstream delays can extend this. Increase the run timeout when processing larger supplied lists.

A deleted, private, blocked or incomplete profile fails the run rather than producing a misleading empty success or zero-filled record. Rows saved before the failure remain available as partial results, not proof that every requested creator succeeded. Check terminal status before treating an export as complete.

Browser challenges and Douyin changes can interrupt access. Recent-post endpoints are deliberately excluded; a public works counter does not mean individual works can be exported.

Scheduling snapshots

Schedule this Actor with Apify to capture your supplied shortlist periodically. Join exports by secUid and compare scrapedAt snapshots in your database or spreadsheet. A counter difference is not automatically campaign-attributed growth.

Integrations

Use Apify webhooks to notify downstream processing after a successful run. Send dataset exports to Google Sheets through Make, n8n, or Zapier, or load JSON into a warehouse. These integrations require your own configuration; the Actor does not send alerts or maintain historical storage across runs.

API usage

Replace APIFY_TOKEN with your securely stored Apify token. The same input contract applies to Console and API runs.

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~douyin-creator-profiles/runs' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary @input.json

JavaScript:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/douyin-creator-profiles').call(input);
if (run.status !== 'SUCCEEDED') throw new Error(`Partial run: ${run.id}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems({ limit: 100 });

Python:

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('automation-lab/douyin-creator-profiles').call(run_input=actor_input)
if run['status'] != 'SUCCEEDED':
    raise RuntimeError('Run failed; dataset may be partial')
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items(limit=100).items

Use with MCP

Use this Actor-specific hosted endpoint:

claude mcp add --transport http apify \
  'https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/douyin-creator-profiles'

For Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code clients supporting HTTP MCP configuration:

{"mcpServers":{"apify":{"url":"https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/douyin-creator-profiles"}}}

Authenticate with your Apify account as required by your client. Discover actual names and schemas using read-only tools/list; selecting an Actor also exposes run and storage helpers, not exactly one tool.

Example prompts: “Fetch current public counters for these supplied Douyin profile URLs, then show the nickname, followers, totalLikes and retrieval time.” An authorized invocation starts once; retain the returned run ID and follow that same run using get-actor-run. A start response is metadata, not dataset rows. call-actor waits at most 45 seconds; use bounded polling, for example 2/4/8-second intervals capped at 10 seconds and a 120-second deadline. On timeout, check the known run instead of starting another. At deadline report pending and its ID.

After success, use get-dataset-items with explicit fields, offset and limit. A practical consumer budget is pages of 20 rows, at most 100 rows and 64 KiB of serialized results admitted to model context, whichever comes first. Enforce the byte budget host-side before model injection; disclose any oversized omitted page. If your client cannot intercept results, do not claim that byte ceiling. Report continuation offset and partial status, keeping full exports outside model context. Discovery caching and token behavior depend on the client; no numeric token savings are promised.

Legality, responsible use and privacy

Collect only public profiles you have a lawful basis to process. Respect applicable laws, Douyin terms, privacy rights and reasonable scheduling frequency. Public availability does not grant unrestricted reuse. This Actor is not affiliated with Douyin or ByteDance and cannot bypass account access restrictions.

Failed operations send sanitized diagnostic input, exceptions and Actor/build/run IDs to our private GlitchTip service for repair. Secret fields and URL queries are removed; reports are retained for 30 days. Raw profile API responses, cookies and browser state are not product output. Browser sessions are ephemeral and closed within the run. Apify stores your dataset, input and logs under your account's retention settings; delete them in Console when no longer needed. The Actor does not send scraped data to an AI provider and does not use AI at runtime. Infrastructure and diagnostics are company-paid; there is no undisclosed third-party subscription required.

For help, open an issue on this Actor's Apify Store Issues tab with your run link and a safe description of the affected profile. Do not share passwords or cookies.

FAQ and troubleshooting

Does this work with TikTok URLs? No. Douyin and TikTok are different platforms.

Can I enter a handle or share link? No. Open the full public Douyin creator page and supply its /user/<sec_uid> URL.

Why did my run fail with some rows present? A later profile was unavailable, incomplete or blocked after bounded attempts. Earlier rows are partial. Verify the source profile before retrying; do not repeatedly rerun an unchanged blocked request.

Can I retrieve recent videos or historical counters? No. Only current profile snapshots and the public works count are supported. Schedule future captures and retain your own history.

Why is a value null? Douyin did not expose that optional value in the successful profile response. Null is not zero. A missing required identity or follower counter is treated as an incomplete response and fails the run.

Related Actors

• Douyin Hot Search Trends Scraper for topic rankings, not creator snapshots.
• Douyin Analytics Scraper for public hot-search topics, not supplied creator profiles.

Use related outputs as separate data sources; this Actor does not join them automatically.