Weibo Public Fans Scraper

Collect publicly exposed Weibo followers as fan user cards from supplied creator UIDs. Use these bounded observations for audience research, creator comparisons, and spreadsheet pipelines—not as a census of an account's audience.

What does this Actor do?

It opens an anonymous mobile visitor session and reads the creator's public fan-list cards. Each dataset row represents one creator/fan pair. It excludes recommended accounts and following lists. No Weibo account, API key, or cookie input is required.

Who is it for?

China market researchers can compare public audience samples across supplied creators. Agencies can join fan identities with existing research datasets. Academic analysts can retain observation times and request provenance while respecting source restrictions.

Why use it?

The Actor separates public fan identities from creator follower-count metadata. It preserves the creator UID on each row, deduplicates pairs within a run, and provides a separate coverage summary. A fan appearing under two creators remains two relationships rather than being silently discarded.

Getting started

1. Supply a numeric Weibo creator UID as a string.
2. Keep the default one-page ceiling for a small observation.
3. Choose a global fan-row limit.
4. Run the Actor and inspect both the dataset and SUMMARY in the key-value store.
5. Export the dataset through Apify's JSON, CSV, Excel or integration features.

{"uids":["1195230310"],"maxItems":20,"maxPages":1}

Inputs

Field	Default	Meaning
uids	Required	1–20 numeric creator UID strings, 5–20 digits; no profile URLs. Whitespace is trimmed and repeated creators removed.
maxItems	20	Global limit on unique creator/fan pairs, 1–1,000. Creators are processed in order; later ones may not be requested.
maxPages	1	Per-creator request ceiling, 1–50. Not a promise of accessible pages or exhaustive coverage.

Zero and unlimited limits are unsupported. Source and billing limits can produce fewer rows than requested.

What fan data is extracted?

Fields	Meaning
creatorUid, fanUid	Source creator and publicly listed fan identity, as strings.
screenName, profileUrl	Display name and canonical mobile fan profile link.
description, avatarUrl	Visible bio and avatar link, or null. Images are not downloaded.
followersCount, followersCountText	Fan profile follower count and original display text; rounded Chinese counts remain approximate.
followingCount, postsCount	Visible fan profile statistics, or null.
verified, verifiedReason	Public verification flag and displayed reason.
page, sourceUrl, scrapedAt	Request page, public JSON URL, and UTC observation time.

Output example

This anonymized example uses the shape verified against public fan cards:

{
  "creatorUid":"1234567890",
  "fanUid":"9876543210",
  "screenName":"Example fan",
  "profileUrl":"https://m.weibo.cn/u/9876543210",
  "description":null,
  "avatarUrl":null,
  "followersCount":10,
  "followersCountText":"10",
  "followingCount":64,
  "postsCount":0,
  "verified":false,
  "verifiedReason":null,
  "page":1,
  "sourceUrl":"https://m.weibo.cn/api/container/getIndex?containerid=231051_-_fans_-_1234567890&page=1",
  "scrapedAt":"2026-10-13T20:00:00.000Z"
}

Coverage and limitations

Weibo can expose only a small public window. Current anonymous probes returned approximately 20 fan cards on page 1, while page 2 redirected to sign-in. The Actor stops at that boundary without attempting authenticated or private access. Increasing maxPages cannot override it.

The SUMMARY record reports saved counts and each creator's stop reason: global/page/billing limit, sign-in required, no new public cards, or source unavailable/empty. An empty source response does not prove zero fans, a private audience, or a nonexistent account. Weibo does not expose enough information to distinguish those cases reliably. No placeholder/error rows are inserted into the fan dataset.

Visible cards and their order can change between runs. The displayed Weibo followers count is not the number of extractable identities. This Actor does not discover creators, collect posts, infer demographics, or monitor changes automatically.

How much does it cost to extract public Weibo fans?

Pay per event: a $0.005 start fee per run, plus the applicable fan-row price. The start fee applies even when a legitimate source response yields no public cards; empty responses and the coverage summary have no separate item charge.

Account tier	Price per fan row
FREE	$0.003335
BRONZE	$0.0029
SILVER	$0.002262
GOLD	$0.00174
PLATINUM	$0.00174
DIAMOND	$0.00174

At BRONZE, estimate five rows as 5 × $0.0029 + $0.005, twenty as 20 × $0.0029 + $0.005, and one hundred across several accessible creators as 100 × $0.0029 + $0.005, including one start fee. These examples assume the rows are actually available; a request limit is not a guaranteed record count. The live Apify pricing panel is authoritative. Billing limits may stop output early.

Integrations

Export creator/fan pairs to a spreadsheet for overlap comparisons. Join on fanUid in your data warehouse and retain creatorUid as the relationship key. Use Apify schedules for repeated observations, then compare snapshots downstream; changes in the public sample do not prove follow/unfollow events.

Connect dataset delivery to Make, Zapier or a webhook when your workflow needs notifications. These are Apify/downstream integrations, not built-in audience alerts.

API usage

Use your own Apify token; never share it in a dataset or prompt.

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~weibo-creator-fans/runs' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"uids":["1195230310"],"maxItems":20,"maxPages":1}'

The response contains a run ID, not fan rows. Check that same run until terminal status, then retrieve its default dataset. Failed runs may have partial output.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/weibo-creator-fans').call({
  uids: ['1195230310'], maxItems: 20, maxPages: 1,
});
if (run.status !== 'SUCCEEDED') throw new Error(run.status);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems({ limit: 20 });
console.log(items);

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('automation-lab/weibo-creator-fans').call(
    run_input={'uids': ['1195230310'], 'maxItems': 20, 'maxPages': 1})
if run['status'] != 'SUCCEEDED':
    raise RuntimeError(run['status'])
print(client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items(limit=20).items)

MCP usage

Select the Actor-specific endpoint, with your client's authorized Apify authentication:

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

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

The JSON configuration above is suitable for Claude Desktop and Cursor clients supporting remote HTTP MCP. For VS Code, use the same endpoint in an HTTP server entry in .vscode/mcp.json, with authentication handled by your client.

Example prompts: “Collect up to 20 publicly exposed fan cards for creator UID 1195230310 and explain the coverage summary.” “Compare the returned creator/fan pairs without claiming an exhaustive audience.”

Discover actual names and argument schemas with scoped tools/list. Actor selection also adds run/data helpers; it is not exactly one tool. Discovery itself does not authorize execution. Start once for an authorized request and retain the run ID. call-actor waits at most 45 seconds; follow the same run with bounded backoff (2, 4, 8 seconds, capped at 10) and a 120-second total deadline. On timeout, recover the known run rather than starting another; at deadline report pending and stop.

After success, read untransformed dataset pages with explicit limits, offsets and fields. A consumer can choose at most 100 rows in pages of 20 and 64 KiB of serialized UTF-8 content, whichever comes first. Enforce that byte ceiling host-side before model injection, disclose truncation and the continuation offset, and keep full exports outside model context. Clients unable to intercept responses cannot promise that hard byte bound. These consumer budgets do not change Actor extraction settings. No universal context/token savings are promised.

Troubleshooting and FAQ

Why are there fewer rows than the creator's follower count? Public lists are bounded and may require sign-in beyond the first page. Check SUMMARY; this is not an exhaustive graph.

Why is the dataset empty? The source can return an explicit unavailable/empty response. It does not establish that the account has no fans. Challenges, unknown response shapes and exhausted network failures instead fail the run.

Do duplicate fans appear? Each creator/fan pair appears at most once per run. The same fan under different creators is intentionally preserved. There is no cross-run deduplication.

What happens after a transient failure? The Actor renews its anonymous browser context once. If both bounded attempts fail, the run fails; any prior rows are partial. It never silently treats a challenge page as an empty audience.

Legality and diagnostics

Collect only publicly exposed records and respect Weibo's terms, applicable law, privacy obligations and retention requirements. Public visibility does not grant unrestricted redistribution or justify sensitive profiling. Do not use the sample to infer private relationships or sensitive attributes.

This is an independent tool, not affiliated with or endorsed by Weibo. No AI model processes inputs or produces results. Apify runs and stores the data; Weibo receives public UID requests. Cookies are anonymous, ephemeral and discarded when the browser closes. Dataset, input, summary and platform logs remain under your Apify account retention controls; delete them through Apify run/storage controls. No separate cross-run cache is maintained. For help, open an issue on this Actor's Apify page and include a run link without secrets.

Spend tiers follow your qualifying aggregate monthly Apify Store spend, not a private per-Actor volume ladder. Pricing examples are estimates, not guaranteed invoices.

Failed operations send sanitized diagnostic input, exceptions and Actor/build/run IDs to our private GlitchTip service for repair. Secret fields and URL query strings are removed. Diagnostic reports are retained for 30 days. No login credentials are requested by this Actor.

Related Actors

• Weibo Posts and Profiles Scraper: public posts and creator metadata, not fan identities.
• Weibo Hot Search Rankings Scraper: public topic ranking observations, not audience lists.