Douyin Hot Search Scraper API — Trending Topics

Reads the live hot-search boards on Douyin (抖音, the Chinese TikTok) and returns one row per trending topic: its rank, the topic text, Douyin's own hot value and view count, how many videos and live rooms are attached to it, the badge Douyin puts next to it, when the topic started, and the cover image.

No Douyin account, no cookie, no signature. The boards are public and this actor reads them directly.

$0.40 per 1,000 topics ($0.0004 each), plus $0.001 each time a run starts — the lowest per-topic price of any Douyin hot-search scraper on the Apify Store with an active user base; the next cheapest, bovi/douyin-scraper (16 monthly users), is $0.465 per 1,000 even on its cheapest volume tier, and the dedicated zen-studio/douyin-hot-search-scraper (194 monthly users) is $5.99 plus a $0.05 start fee.

Boards

Board	What it is	Rows
hot	抖音热榜 — the main hot list you see on douyin.com/hot	~51
entertainment	娱乐榜 — film, TV, music, celebrities	~50
society	社会榜 — news, economy, public affairs	~50
rising	实时上升热点 — the real-time rising strip	5

rising is carried inside the hot list's own response, so selecting both costs one request, not two.

What a row looks like

Real output from a run on 2026-08-07:

{
  "board": "society",
  "boardName": "Society board (社会榜)",
  "rank": 3,
  "isPinned": false,
  "word": "“新疆阿勒泰八月能滑雪”不实",
  "hotValue": 8042653,
  "viewCount": 610881,
  "videoCount": 1,
  "discussionVideoCount": 1,
  "articleCount": 0,
  "liveRoomCount": 0,
  "peakRank": 14,
  "label": 16,
  "labelName": "Debunked (辟谣)",
  "labelImageUrl": "https://lf3-static.bytednsdoc.com/obj/eden-cn/.../hotspot_detail_page/16.png",
  "eventTime": "2026-08-07T11:15:54.000Z",
  "eventTimestamp": 1786101354,
  "sentenceId": "2601412",
  "groupId": "7669937843521768744",
  "coverUrl": "https://p3-sign.douyinpic.com/tos-cn-p-0015/...~noop.jpeg?x-expires=...",
  "coverUrls": ["...", "...", "..."],
  "searchUrl": "https://www.douyin.com/search/%E2%80%9C%E6%96%B0%E7%96%86...",
  "hotSpotUrl": "https://www.douyin.com/hot/2601412/%E2%80%9C%E6%96%B0%E7%96%86...",
  "boardActiveTime": "2026-08-08 06:04:45",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-07T22:05:33.412Z"
}

hotValue is Douyin's internal heat score — useful for ranking topics against each other in the same snapshot, not as an absolute. viewCount is the topic's total views. peakRank is the best rank the topic has held.

labelName is read off the badge art Douyin itself serves: New (新), Commercial (商), Hot (热), Exploding (爆), Premiere (首发), Exclusive (独家), Challenge (挑战), Debunked (辟谣), Widely discussed (热议). About a third of topics carry one; the rest have label: 0 and labelName: null.

isPinned marks the promo/PSA row Douyin pins above rank 1 on the ranked boards. It has rank: null and no counts.

Input

{
  "boards": ["hot", "entertainment", "society", "rising"],
  "maxItems": 200
}

Leave the input empty and you get the hot list (~51 topics). Clear the board list entirely and you get one labelled sample row and no charges for topics.

Measured numbers

From real runs on the Apify platform, 2026-08-07:

Run	Rows	Wall time	What you pay
rising only	5	2.6 s	$0.0030
hot only	51	6.7 s	$0.0214
all four boards	156	14.0 s	$0.0634

(The "what you pay" column is the $0.001 start fee plus $0.0004 per topic returned.)

156 topics is the practical ceiling — that is every topic Douyin publishes across all four boards at one moment. Set maxItems lower if you only want the top of a board.

Topics move fast

The boards refresh every few minutes. boardActiveTime is Douyin's own timestamp for the snapshot (Beijing time) and eventTime is when the topic first appeared. Two runs ten minutes apart will differ in ranks and hot values. If you want a time series, run it on a schedule and keep the snapshots.

What this does not do

• No keyword search. Douyin's search endpoint requires a logged-in account — it answers status_code: 2483 / 请先登录 to anonymous callers. This actor covers the hot-search boards only. If you need arbitrary keyword search, you need an actor that ships Douyin credentials.
• No videos per topic. Douyin does not expose the videos behind a hot topic without an account. The one endpoint that answers anonymously (aweme/related) returns the generic recommendation feed, not the topic's videos, so it is not shipped — it would be a fake column. videoCount tells you how many videos Douyin counts under the topic; the list itself is not available.
• No translation. word is the topic exactly as Douyin publishes it, in Chinese.
• Cover URLs expire. coverUrl is a signed CDN link with roughly a day of life. Download the image if you need to keep it.
• No live-room contents. liveRoomCount is a count only.

FAQ

What is the Douyin hot search list? It is Douyin's trending board — the ranked list of topics people in China are searching for and posting about right now, published at douyin.com/hot. It refreshes every few minutes.

Do I need a Douyin account or cookies? No. The hot-search boards are public. This actor reads them without any login, cookie or request signature.

Can this scrape Douyin by keyword? No. Douyin's keyword search requires an account and returns status_code: 2483 to anonymous requests. This actor covers the hot-search boards. Nothing about it is search-by-keyword.

How much does it cost? $0.001 to start a run, then $0.0004 per topic — $0.40 per 1,000. A full four-board run returns 156 topics for about $0.063.

How many topics do I get per run? About 51 from the hot list, 50 each from entertainment and society, 5 from the rising strip. 156 in total. Douyin does not publish more than that.

Is the output in Chinese? The topic text is, because that is what Douyin publishes. Every other field — rank, counts, timestamps, badge names, URLs — is numeric or English.

How do I track a topic over time? sentenceId is stable for a topic across runs. Schedule the actor, keep every snapshot, and join on sentenceId.

What does hotValue mean? It is Douyin's heat score for the topic. Compare it between topics in the same snapshot. It is not a view count — viewCount is.

Is it legal? It reads a public page that anyone can open in a browser, without logging in or evading any access control. Check your own jurisdiction and Douyin's terms before you build on it.

What happens if Douyin blocks a run? You get an uncharged diagnostic row explaining what happened. You are only charged for topics that actually come back.

Output fields

board, boardName, rank, isPinned, word, hotValue, viewCount, videoCount, discussionVideoCount, articleCount, liveRoomCount, peakRank, label, labelName, labelImageUrl, eventTime, eventTimestamp, sentenceId, groupId, coverUrl, coverUrls, searchUrl, hotSpotUrl, boardActiveTime, scrapedAt.