Zhihu Scraper (知乎)

Zhihu Scraper extracts public data from Zhihu (知乎), China's largest Q&A and long-form knowledge platform, with no browser, no proxy setup and no Zhihu account of your own. Get the live Zhihu hot list (知乎热榜) with heat and answer counts, hot searches (热搜), search suggestions for Chinese keyword research, and column (专栏) articles with full text. Add your own Zhihu cookie to also pull questions with their answers, single articles, keyword search results and member profiles. Export clean JSON, CSV or Excel, or call it as a Zhihu API.

Use it for China market research, trend tracking, content and topic research, Chinese keyword research, brand and KOL monitoring, and AI/LLM pipelines that need high-quality Chinese long-form text.

• 🔥 Zhihu hot list (知乎热榜): ~30 trending questions with title, excerpt, heat (热度), answer count and link.
• 🔎 Hot searches and search suggestions: what Chinese users are searching for right now, and what they type after any keyword.
• 📚 Column (专栏) articles with full text: title, full text and HTML, votes, comments, dates and author. No login needed.
• 💬 Questions, answers, search and profiles: unlocked when you paste your own Zhihu cookie.

What data can you scrape from Zhihu?

Feature	Needs a cookie?	type in output
Hot list (知乎热榜)	No	hotList
Hot searches (热搜)	No	hotSearch
Search suggestions (autocomplete)	No	suggestion
Column info + column articles (full text)	No	column, article
Question + answers (full text) (beta)	Yes (your own)	question, answer
Single article by URL (beta)	Yes	article
Keyword search (beta)	Yes	answer, article, question
Member profile (beta)	Yes	member

The guest features work with no login at all. Zhihu shows questions, answers, search and profiles only to logged-in visitors, so those features use a cookie you paste from your own browser session. The actor never logs in for you and never uses shared accounts.

Beta: the cookie features are new. If they return nothing with a fresh cookie, please open an issue on the actor page and it will be fixed quickly. The guest features are stable.

How much does it cost to scrape Zhihu?

Pay per result. There is no monthly fee and no proxy to configure.

Event	Price (FREE/BRONZE)	Lower on paid plans
Article, answer, question, column or profile	$0.0035 / result	down to $0.0025
Hot-list item, hot search or suggestion	$0.001 / item	down to $0.0006
Actor start	$0.00005 / run	—
AI tags (optional)	$0.002 / tagged item	down to $0.0015

You are charged only for results actually saved. The whole hot list (~30 items) costs about $0.03, and 1,000 full-text articles or answers cost about $3.50.

AI tags: sentiment, topics and an English summary (optional)

Turn on AI tags (aiEnrichment) and every hot-list question, article, answer and question gets an ai field: sentiment (positive, neutral, negative or mixed) with a score from -1 to 1, topic labels, named entities, and a one-sentence English summary. It's useful for monitoring, research and dashboards when your team doesn't read Chinese. It's off by default and costs nothing unless enabled. Free-plan runs include a 3-item AI trial; the rest of the results are saved without AI fields.

Real output (a hot-list question, 14 October 2026; excerpt shortened):

{
 "type": "hotList",
 "rank": 1,
 "title": "老人凌晨下地干活被气枪击中身亡，持气枪打猎合法吗？案件还有哪些疑点待查？涉事人员将承担什么法律责任？",
 "excerpt": "「天气预报说有雨，他想抢着把活干完，第二天跟子女们团聚过中秋。」10 月 13 日，湖北荆门的成先生向媒体反映，他的弟弟…",
 "heatValue": 4540000,
 "ai": {
  "sentiment": "negative",
  "sentimentScore": -0.9,
  "topics": [
   "Crime",
   "Public Safety",
   "Investigation",
   "Rural Life"
  ],
  "entities": [
   "成某",
   "荆门警方"
  ],
  "summaryEn": "A 64-year-old man was shot and killed by an air gun while working in his field at night, and the police are currently investigating the incident."
 }
}

How fast is it?

A run that fetches the hot list, hot searches, one keyword's suggestions and 5 column articles finishes in about 45 seconds on the default 256 MB memory.

How to scrape Zhihu

1. Click Try for free and keep the example input. It fetches the hot list and 5 articles from one column.
2. Add more column URLs, turn on hot searches, or add keywords for search suggestions.
3. For questions, answers, single articles, search or profiles, paste your own zhihuCookie (see below).
4. Download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read them through the API.

Input example

{
  "includeHotList": true,
  "includeHotSearches": true,
  "suggestionQueries": ["人工智能"],
  "columnUrls": ["https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/c_1034016963944755200"],
  "maxArticlesPerColumn": 20,
  "questionUrls": [],
  "searchQueries": [],
  "zhihuCookie": ""
}

Field	Meaning
includeHotList	Fetch the live hot list (知乎热榜).
includeHotSearches	Fetch the trending search terms.
suggestionQueries	Keywords to get search suggestions for.
columnUrls / maxArticlesPerColumn	Columns (专栏) to scrape, and how many articles from each.
questionUrls / maxAnswersPerQuestion	Questions to scrape with their answers (needs zhihuCookie).
articleUrls	Single articles (needs zhihuCookie; column articles don't).
searchQueries / maxSearchResults	Keywords to search (needs zhihuCookie).
memberUrls	User profiles (needs zhihuCookie).
zhihuCookie	Your own logged-in cookie (optional, secret).

Output examples

A hot-list item:

{
  "type": "hotList", "rank": 1, "title": "雷波县教师被安排与「耻辱」二字合影…",
  "heat": "552 万热度", "heatValue": 5520000, "answerCount": 151,
  "questionId": "2093376100948599059", "url": "https://www.zhihu.com/question/2093376100948599059"
}

A column article:

{
  "type": "article", "articleId": "625692987", "url": "https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/625692987",
  "title": "[翻译] 《幽灵诡计》GHOST STAFF 座谈会", "text": "本文来自《幽灵诡计》官方攻略设定集…",
  "voteupCount": 50, "commentCount": 4, "createdAt": "2023-04-28T08:58:13+00:00",
  "authorName": "平昭·南宫司卿", "origin": "column:c_1034016963944755200"
}

A search suggestion:

{ "type": "suggestion", "seed": "人工智能", "rank": 1, "query": "人工智能专业" }

Every record has a type field, so you can filter one dataset by record type. The dataset also has a "full text" view for articles and answers.

Use Zhihu Scraper with AI agents (MCP)

This actor is available on the Apify MCP server, so assistants that support MCP can call it as a tool:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=bossless/zhihu-scraper

Ask your agent to "get the Zhihu hot list" or "pull the latest articles from this Zhihu column", and it will run this actor and read back the results.

Use the Zhihu API from code

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/bossless~zhihu-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"includeHotList": true}'

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("bossless/zhihu-scraper").call(run_input={"includeHotList": True})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

How to get your Zhihu cookie (for questions, answers, search and profiles)

1. Log in to zhihu.com in your browser.
2. Open DevTools → Network, reload, and click any zhihu.com request.
3. Copy the full Cookie: request header (it must contain z_c0) and paste it into zhihuCookie.

Your cookie is stored as secret input. Zhihu rate-limits heavy use of a single account, so keep runs moderate.

FAQ

Do I need a proxy? No. A China residential proxy is built in.

Is a cookie required? Only for questions, answers, single articles, search and profiles. The hot list, hot searches, suggestions and column articles need nothing.

Can I get full article text without a cookie? Yes. Articles inside a column (专栏) come with full text and HTML as a guest. Add the column URL to columnUrls.

Can I track the Zhihu hot list over time? Yes. Use an Apify schedule (for example hourly) with includeHotList on, and each run saves a timestamped snapshot.

Why might questions or search return nothing? You either left zhihuCookie empty (they are then skipped with a warning), or the cookie expired. Copy a fresh one.

Is this legal? It collects publicly visible data and, for the cookie features, data your own account can already see. You are responsible for complying with Zhihu's terms and applicable law.

Is this an official Zhihu product? No. This is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Zhihu.

Ready-made Zhihu tasks

One-click presets for common jobs. Open one, change the input if you like, and run it:

• Zhihu Hot List (知乎热榜) in English with AI: every trending question with an English summary and sentiment.
• Zhihu Hot List Tracker (知乎热榜): trending questions with heat and answer counts.
• Zhihu Hot Searches (知乎热搜): what Chinese users are searching for right now.
• Zhihu Search Suggestions for Chinese Keyword Research: long-tail autocomplete for any keyword.
• Zhihu Column (专栏) Article Exporter: full-text articles from any column.

More China data scrapers

• Bilibili Scraper (B站 / 哔哩哔哩): videos, danmaku, comments, trending and creators.
• Weibo Scraper (微博): hot search, profiles, post search and timelines.
• Chinese Video Transcriber: Bilibili videos to text, English subtitles and SRT with AI.
• China Hot Search in English: Weibo, Douyin, Baidu, Zhihu and Bilibili trending topics with English summaries.

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知乎数据采集器（知乎爬虫 / 知乎热榜 API / 知乎专栏导出）

无需登录即可抓取知乎热榜（热度、回答数）、知乎热搜、搜索联想词，以及知乎专栏文章全文。粘贴你自己的知乎 Cookie 后，还可抓取问题及回答全文、单篇文章、关键词搜索结果和用户资料。结果可导出为 JSON、CSV 或 Excel，按条计费。