Douyin (TikTok China) Scraper — Videos, Creators & Comments

Export Douyin data as JSON, CSV or Excel. Search by keyword, pull full video details, profile creators, collect comments — without an API key, a Chinese business entity, or an agency.

Douyin has 700M+ daily active users and is where Chinese consumers discover products, music, food trends and entertainment. It is also almost completely closed to outsiders: no public API, cryptographically-signed web endpoints, and the official Open Platform requires a mainland Chinese company. This Actor gives you the data layer without any of that.

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Quick start (3 minutes)

1. Grab a cookie — open https://www.douyin.com/ in your browser (log in for best results), press F12 → Console, run copy(document.cookie).
2. Click "Try for free" at the top of this page (or paste the cookie into the cookie field of a run).
3. Hit "Start" — results appear in the Dataset tab within ~45 seconds.

Minimal input that works:

{
  "searchKeywords": ["美食"],
  "cookie": "ttwid=...; sessionid_ss=...;",
  "maxItems": 20
}

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What you can do with it

You are	You use it to
A brand entering China	Measure share of voice, find which product claims resonate, track competitors
An agency	Build KOL / influencer shortlists from real engagement numbers, not media kits
A dropshipper / sourcing operator	See what is trending in China 3–6 months before it reaches Western marketplaces
A music / entertainment team	Spot breakout songs, hashtags, dance challenges by region
A trend / AI team	Feed a genuinely hard-to-obtain Chinese-language video dataset into your models

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Three ways to use it

1 · Search by keyword

{
  "searchKeywords": ["火锅", "宠物"],
  "cookie": "...",
  "maxItems": 200,
  "sort": "most_liked",
  "searchType": "all",
  "fetchVideoDetails": true,
  "maxCommentsPerVideo": 20
}

2 · Deep-scrape specific videos

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.douyin.com/video/7421123456789012345"
  ],
  "cookie": "...",
  "maxCommentsPerVideo": 100
}

3 · Pull a creator's recent posts

{
  "creatorUrls": [
    "https://www.douyin.com/user/MS4wLjABAAAAyourSecUidHere"
  ],
  "cookie": "...",
  "maxPostsPerCreator": 50
}

The user URL path is a sec_uid (base64-url string starting with MS4wLjABAAAA), not the pretty name you may see on the profile page.

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Input reference

Field	Default	Notes
searchKeywords	[]	Chinese works ×10 better than English
videoUrls	[]	https://www.douyin.com/video/<aweme_id>
creatorUrls	[]	https://www.douyin.com/user/<sec_uid>
cookie	""	Required in practice. See Cookie walkthrough
maxItems	100	Hard cap. You only pay for records actually delivered
sort	general	general / latest / most_liked
searchType	all	all / video / user
fetchVideoDetails	false	Open each video for full desc + music + IP + stats
maxCommentsPerVideo	0	Set > 0 to also pull comments (charged separately)
maxPostsPerCreator	20	Recent posts to collect per creator
proxyConfiguration	{useApifyProxy: true, apifyProxyGroups: ["RESIDENTIAL"]}	CN proxy strongly recommended

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Cookie walkthrough

1. Open https://www.douyin.com/ in Chrome / Edge / Firefox
2. Log in — scan the QR with the Douyin mobile app (strongly recommended)
3. Press F12 → Developer Tools opens
4. Click the "Console" tab
5. Paste this and press Enter:
      copy(document.cookie)
6. Clipboard now holds the cookie string
7. Paste into the "cookie" field of the Actor input

The cookie looks like:

ttwid=xxx; odin_tt=xxx; sessionid_ss=xxx; msToken=xxx; s_v_web_id=xxx; ...

Critical cookies: ttwid and sessionid_ss. If either is missing, log in again.

Cookies die fast on Douyin. Expect to refresh every 1–3 days under heavy use. The Actor logs a warning when the cookie looks poisoned.

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CN proxy — required in practice

Douyin blocks or heavily throttles most non-CN IPs. The Actor usually returns zero without a CN residential proxy.

"proxyConfiguration": {
  "useApifyProxy": true,
  "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
  "apifyProxyCountry": "CN"
}

Bring-your-own works too:

"proxyConfiguration": {
  "proxyUrls": ["http://user:pass@cn-proxy.example.com:8080"]
}

---

Output

Each record is a flat JSON object. Chinese counts like 1.2w / 3.4万 / 2亿 are normalised to integers.

Video (from search)

{
  "source": "search",
  "searchKeyword": "美食",
  "awemeId": "7421123456789012345",
  "awemeType": 0,
  "title": "撸猫日常",
  "description": "一只小猫咪在玩",
  "awemeUrl": "https://www.douyin.com/video/7421123456789012345",
  "coverUrl": "https://p.douyin.com/cover.jpg",
  "videoUrl": "https://aweme.snssdk.com/video.mp4",
  "duration": 15,
  "diggCount": 12000,
  "commentCount": 350,
  "shareCount": 42,
  "collectCount": 12000,
  "playCount": 500000,
  "createdAt": 1727500000,
  "authorId": "9876543210",
  "authorSecUid": "MS4wLjABAAAA...",
  "authorNickname": "撸猫小队长",
  "authorAvatar": "...",
  "authorUrl": "https://www.douyin.com/user/MS4wLjABAAAA..."
}

Video detail (with fetchVideoDetails: true)

Adds ipLocation, downloadCount, imageUrls[] (photo-mode posts), tags[], and music.{id,title,author}.

Creator profile

{
  "source": "creator",
  "secUid": "MS4wLjABAAAA...",
  "userId": "9876543210",
  "nickname": "撸猫小队长",
  "douyinId": "catmaster",
  "bio": "每天一只猫",
  "gender": 2,
  "ipLocation": "北京",
  "followingCount": 128,
  "followerCount": 125000,
  "totalFavorited": 34000,
  "awemeCount": 342,
  "verified": true,
  "verifyReason": "宠物博主"
}

Comment

{
  "source": "comment",
  "awemeId": "7421...",
  "commentId": "7421000000000000001",
  "content": "太可爱了",
  "diggCount": 11000,
  "replyCount": 23,
  "createdAt": 1727500100,
  "ipLocation": "上海",
  "authorId": "111",
  "authorSecUid": "MS4wLjABAAAA...",
  "authorNickname": "路人甲"
}

---

Pricing

Pay-per-event — you are only charged for records actually delivered.

Event	Price (USD)	What triggers it
apify-actor-start	$0.005	Once per run (per GB RAM, min 1)
video-scraped	$0.0015	Each video delivered
creator-scraped	$0.004	Each creator profile
comment-scraped	$0.0004	Each comment

Cost estimator

Job	Setting	Approx cost
Quick keyword scan	100 videos, no details	$0.16
Deep hashtag sweep	1 000 videos + details + 20 comments	$9.50
10-KOL shortlist	10 creators × 50 posts each	$0.80
Daily trend monitor	500 videos/day for 30 days	$22.50 / month

Platform margin: Apify takes 20%, you keep 80%. Prices above are what you pay.

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Common errors

Error / symptom	Cause	Fix
No videos captured for 'X'	Cookie expired or no CN proxy	Re-copy cookie + enable CN residential proxy
Zero results on every run	IP blocked by Douyin	Switch Apify proxy group, wait 10 min
BrowserType.launch timeout	Memory too low	Raise minMemoryMbytes to 4096
Login page in screenshots	Cookie wasn't logged-in	Scan QR with Douyin mobile app, re-copy
aweme_id not extracted from URL	Wrong URL format	Must be /video/<numeric_id>, not shortened share link
Only comments, no videos	maxItems consumed by comments	Separate the runs or raise maxItems

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Why this exists

Douyin signs every web API call with X-Bogus and msToken headers derived from obfuscated browser JS that ByteDance updates without notice. Re-implementing is a losing maintenance race.

Instead the Actor opens a real Chromium page in the Apify runtime, lets the page's own JS make the real signed calls, and reads JSON off the wire. ByteDance can rotate signatures all they want — the browser catches up for us.

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Known limits

• Cookies expire within days. Users are expected to refresh their own cookie.
• Search depth is capped by Douyin's own paging — a few hundred videos per keyword.
• English keywords mostly return nothing. The platform is Chinese-first.
• Non-CN IPs are usually blocked. CN residential proxy is practically required.
• This is a scraper, not a CRM. Data is read-only, best-effort.

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Changelog

• 0.1.1 · Initial public release