Douban 豆瓣 Scraper - Movies, Ratings, Comments & Reviews

Douban 豆瓣 Scraper collects public movie and TV data from Douban (豆瓣) and returns clean, flat JSON. You get four kinds of data: the recent hot movie and TV lists with scores, the short comments under any film or series, full subject details such as cast, genres, release dates and IMDb ID, and the full text of long reviews. It is made for researchers, analysts, data teams and developers who need Chinese audience opinions and film metadata. No Douban account, API keys, proxies or cookies are needed.

What is Douban?

Douban (豆瓣) is a Chinese website where people rate, comment on and review films, TV series, books and music. Its movie section, movie.douban.com, is often described as China's IMDb: every film or series has a score out of 10, short comments and long reviews written by users. This Actor covers the movie and TV part of Douban. It is an independent tool and is not affiliated with Douban.

What data can you get?

The Actor has four modes. Every record has a type field that tells you what it is: title, comment, subject or review. The tables below list the fields of each record type, the most useful ones first.

Recent hot movies or TV (mode hot, type: "title")

Field	Description
rank	Position in the recent-hot list
title	Title of the film or series
rating	Douban score out of 10
ratingCount	Number of ratings on Douban
summary	Douban's one-line summary: year / country / genres / director / main cast
episodesInfo	Episode info such as 47集全; empty for films
isNew	True for titles flagged as new
kind	movie or tv
subjectId	Douban subject ID of the film or series
url	Link to the subject page on douban.com
posterUrl	Poster image URL
posterLargeUrl	Larger poster image URL

Short comments (mode comments, type: "comment")

Field	Description
content	Comment text
ratingText	The commenter's rating word: 力荐, 推荐, 还行, 较差 or 很差
stars	The same rating as 1-5 stars (力荐 = 5, 很差 = 1)
likeCount	Number of people who found the comment useful
location	IP location of the commenter; empty for many comments
userName	Public display name of the commenter
avatarUrl	Avatar URL of the commenter
commentId	Comment ID
subjectId	Douban subject ID of the film or series the comment belongs to
time	Time the comment was written; empty for comments

Comments come in Douban's popular order, most useful first.

Subject details (mode subject, type: "subject")

Field	Description
title	Title of the film or series
year	Release year
rating	Douban score out of 10
ratingCount	Number of ratings on Douban
genres	List of genres
directors	List of directors
writers	List of writers
cast	Main cast in billing order (Douban cuts long lists)
regions	Countries or regions
languages	Languages
releaseDates	Release dates with the festival or region in brackets
duration	Running time as Douban shows it, e.g. 142分钟
durationMinutes	Running time in minutes
episodes	Number of episodes; empty for films
aliases	Other titles
imdbId	IMDb ID
posterUrl	Poster image URL
subjectId	Douban subject ID
url	Link to the subject page on douban.com

Review full text (mode review, type: "review")

Field	Description
content	Full text of the review
title	Title of the review
ratingText	The reviewer's rating word: 力荐, 推荐, 还行, 较差 or 很差
stars	The same rating as 1-5 stars (力荐 = 5, 很差 = 1)
userName	Public display name of the reviewer
time	Time the review was written
forwardCount	Times the review was forwarded
collectCount	Times the review was saved
reviewId	Review ID
url	Link to the review page on douban.com

The rating words mean roughly: 力荐 = strongly recommend, 推荐 = recommend, 还行 = OK, 较差 = poor, 很差 = very poor. The stars field turns them into a number so you can sort and average them.

How to use Douban 豆瓣 Scraper

1. Open Douban 豆瓣 Scraper on Apify Store and go to the Input tab.
2. Choose a Mode: recent hot movies or TV, short comments of subjects, subject details, or review full text.
3. Fill in the input for that mode: pick movies or TV series for the hot list, paste Douban subject links or IDs for comments and subject details, or paste Douban review links or IDs for reviews.
4. Set Max results, the total number of items you want from the run.
5. Click Start. With an empty input ({}) the Actor lists the 20 recent hot movies, so you can test it in seconds.
6. Open the dataset when the run finishes. It has ready-made views (Hot titles, Comments, Subjects, Reviews). Export it as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it through the API.

Input

All fields are optional. You can paste Douban links as they are; there is no need to dig out the ID.

Field	Type	Required	What it does	Default
mode	string	Optional	What to scrape: hot (recent hot list), comments (short comments of subjects), subject (subject details) or review (review full text)	hot
hotKind	string	Optional	Mode hot: movie for recent hot movies or tv for recent hot TV series	movie
subjects	array of strings	Optional (needed for modes comments and subject)	Douban links (https://movie.douban.com/subject/<id>/) or subject IDs of films and series	none
reviews	array of strings	Optional (needed for mode review)	Douban review links (https://movie.douban.com/review/<id>/) or review IDs	none
maxResults	integer	Optional	Maximum number of items to return in total for this run (1 to 5,000). You are charged per item returned, and the run stops as soon as the number is reached	20

Example: recent hot TV series

{
  "mode": "hot",
  "hotKind": "tv",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Example: short comments of a film

{
  "mode": "comments",
  "subjects": ["https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/"],
  "maxResults": 100
}

Example: subject details for several titles

{
  "mode": "subject",
  "subjects": [
    "https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/",
    "38184963"
  ],
  "maxResults": 10
}

Example: full text of a review

{
  "mode": "review",
  "reviews": ["https://movie.douban.com/review/10000000/"],
  "maxResults": 5
}

Output example

The values below are illustrative samples, not real user data.

A hot title:

{
  "type": "title",
  "kind": "movie",
  "rank": 1,
  "subjectId": "38184963",
  "url": "https://movie.douban.com/subject/38184963/",
  "title": "大学炸弹客",
  "rating": 6.4,
  "ratingCount": 1830,
  "summary": "2026 / 美国 / 剧情 惊悚 犯罪 / 雅努斯·梅兹 / 罗素·克劳 雅各布·特伦布莱",
  "episodesInfo": null,
  "isNew": false,
  "posterUrl": "https://img3.doubanio.com/view/photo/s_ratio_poster/public/p2936115679.jpg",
  "posterLargeUrl": "https://img3.doubanio.com/view/photo/m_ratio_poster/public/p2936115679.jpg"
}

A short comment:

{
  "type": "comment",
  "commentId": "32514679",
  "subjectId": "1292052",
  "userName": "示例用户",
  "avatarUrl": "https://img3.doubanio.com/icon/u000000-1.jpg",
  "ratingText": "力荐",
  "stars": 5,
  "content": "这部电影讲的是希望和耐心，看完很久都忘不了。",
  "likeCount": 1520,
  "time": null,
  "location": "上海"
}

A subject:

{
  "type": "subject",
  "subjectId": "1292052",
  "url": "https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/",
  "title": "肖申克的救赎",
  "year": 1994,
  "rating": 9.7,
  "ratingCount": 3000000,
  "genres": ["剧情", "犯罪"],
  "directors": ["弗兰克·德拉邦特"],
  "writers": ["弗兰克·德拉邦特", "斯蒂芬·金"],
  "cast": ["蒂姆·罗宾斯", "摩根·弗里曼"],
  "regions": ["美国"],
  "languages": ["英语"],
  "releaseDates": ["1994-09-10(多伦多电影节)", "1994-10-14(美国)"],
  "duration": "142分钟",
  "durationMinutes": 142,
  "episodes": null,
  "aliases": ["The Shawshank Redemption"],
  "imdbId": "tt0111161",
  "posterUrl": "https://img3.doubanio.com/view/photo/s_ratio_poster/public/p000000000.jpg"
}

A review:

{
  "type": "review",
  "reviewId": "10000000",
  "url": "https://movie.douban.com/review/10000000/",
  "title": "一部关于希望的电影",
  "userName": "示例影评人",
  "ratingText": "推荐",
  "stars": 4,
  "time": "2024-05-12 21:30:00",
  "content": "这是一篇示例影评的全文。……",
  "forwardCount": 12,
  "collectCount": 85
}

How much does it cost?

The Actor uses pay-per-event pricing. You pay only for the events below, in USD:

Event	When it is charged	Price
Run start	Once per run, charged when the first request to the data source succeeds, even if that request returns nothing. In comments mode each subject after the first adds one more start fee, because it needs its own requests; that fee is charged before the subject's first request and is kept even if that subject then fails or returns nothing	$0.015
Result	Each hot title or short comment	$0.005
Subject	Each subject detail record	$0.025
Review full text	Each review full text	$0.03

Worked examples:

• 100 comments on one film cost $0.015 + 100 × $0.005 = $0.515.
• 50 hot TV series cost $0.015 + 50 × $0.005 = $0.265.
• Details for 10 subjects cost $0.015 + 10 × $0.025 = $0.265.
• Full text of 5 reviews cost $0.015 + 5 × $0.03 = $0.165.

The run-start fee is charged when the first request to the data source succeeds, even if that request returns nothing. It is not charged when the data source fails from the start or rejects the IDs, or when your spending limit cannot cover it. You are never charged for items that were not delivered, and you never pay for more than maxResults items. The run also stops by itself if your spending limit is reached.

On the free Apify plan, a run makes only one data request and then stops with "Free plan limit reached": you get up to 20 hot titles or up to 20 comments (the first page of the first subject), but only 1 subject detail or 1 review. Any paid Apify plan removes the limit. On the free Apify plan each account can run this Actor up to 3 times per 24 hours and 10 times per 7 days, within a small lifetime free allowance shared across all our Actors, and all free accounts share a daily free budget. When any of these limits is reached, the run stops before fetching anything and nothing is charged.

Use cases

• Audience research: read what Chinese viewers say about a film or series in their own words, with each comment's rating and likes.
• Trend tracking: see which films and series are on Douban's recent hot lists and follow how their scores and rating counts move over time.
• Catalogue enrichment: add Chinese titles, other titles, cast, directors, release dates and running times to a movie database or recommender, and join records with other sources through the IMDb ID.
• China market research: check how a film or series is received in China, including scores, comment tone and, for many comments, the IP location of the commenter.
• Sentiment analysis and AI datasets: build Chinese-language opinion datasets where each comment or review comes with a 1-5 star label.
• Review analysis: collect the full text of long reviews with forward and save counts to study which reviews get attention.

Integrations and API

You can start runs from the Apify Console, through the Apify API, or on a schedule (for example, the hot lists every day). Results can be sent on to other tools with Apify integrations and webhooks, or downloaded as JSON, CSV or Excel. Here is a Python example using the apify-client package:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("clover_folktale/douban-scraper").call(run_input={
    "mode": "comments",
    "subjects": ["https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/"],
    "maxResults": 100,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Tips and limits

• Request sizes: a hot list or comment request returns 20 items; subject details and review texts are one item per request.
• Hot list size: the hot lists show Douban's "latest" selection. The movie list holds about 500 titles and the TV list about 250.
• Comment order: comments come in Douban's popular order, most useful first.
• Stability: the Actor retries transient errors on its own and stops cleanly instead of failing half-way.
• Not found: an unknown or deleted subject or review is skipped, not a failed run. If too many inputs return nothing, the run stops to protect your budget.
• Budget: a run stops as soon as maxResults is reached, and also when your spending limit is reached.
• Free plan: on the free Apify plan a run makes only one data request: up to 20 hot titles or comments (first page of the first subject only), but only 1 subject detail or 1 review. Any paid Apify plan removes the limit.
• Empty fields:
  • time is empty on comments; it is filled on reviews.
  • location (IP location) is empty on many comments.
  • episodesInfo and episodes are empty for films.
  • In subject records, writers, languages or aliases can be empty for less known titles.
  • cast lists the main cast only, because Douban cuts long lists.
• No user IDs: comments carry the display name and avatar but no user ID.

FAQ

Do I need a Douban account, cookies or an API key?

No. You do not need a Douban account, API keys, proxies or cookies. You only need an Apify account to run the Actor.

Is it legal to scrape Douban?

The Actor returns only public data: what anyone sees on a Douban page, such as scores, comment text, display names and avatars. It returns no account data and no private data such as phone numbers or private messages. You are responsible for how you use the data and for following the laws and rules that apply to you.

How fresh is the data?

The data is collected when you run the Actor, so it reflects what Douban shows at that moment. The hot lists follow Douban's "latest" selection. Schedule runs if you want to track changes over time.

Why are some fields empty?

Douban does not show every field for every item. time is empty on comments, location is empty on many comments, episode fields are empty for films, and writers, languages or aliases can be empty for less known titles. See Tips and limits for the full list.

How many results can I get?

Up to 5,000 items per run, set with maxResults. On the free Apify plan a run makes only one data request: up to 20 hot titles or comments, but only 1 subject detail or 1 review. The hot movie list holds about 500 titles and the TV list about 250.

Does it cover books or music?

No. This Actor covers Douban movies and TV series: the hot lists, short comments, subject details and long reviews.

Can I schedule runs and export the data?

Yes. You can schedule runs in Apify, start them through the API, and export every dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel.

A field or filter I need is missing. What can I do?

Open an issue from the Actor page and it will be looked at.

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